October 2003 | back-issues, fiction
by jc jaress
She ended it with the slamming of a door that had begun to chip the paint from around the jamb
One day she’d slam that door and knock all the paint off of everything and he would just stand there
Still
There was no sign or warning
No look in her eye
No twitch
No minor hesitation
And then, as if out of nowhere, she would lay 14-years of marriage across his face with a swift, flat hand that reeled the memories in his already spinning brain
It wasn’t fair
It was never fair
As a child he had lived this same way for too many years,
Until that day, as a young man, when he caught his mother’s hand in mid-strike and held it there
Just a little too tightly
And a little too long
And told her, “Never again.”
But not this one
He never stopped her
He just stood
And took it
And never raised a hand
She was just too close to him
Or maybe he was too close to her
And it didn’t seem to matter on which side he chose
Like trying to pick between two long lines at the checkout stand and always guessing wrong
There was no winning in it for him
Just chipping paint
And so many things left untold
September 2003 | back-issues, fiction
by jc jaress
Forty years of cigarettes had worked her face over like a metal rake and her hair that she says use to fall like golden sunshine now sits brittle and high upon this plucked and painted landscape
But she still has legs
And an ass that stumble-dances its way from barstool to barstool like a parade of horses on their way to the starting gate carrying the jocks wearing their multi-colored silks
Prancing and snorting
All stiff legged, every step working up the lather between their cheeks
But it isn’t the body that keeps her in business, no, it’s the way she carries it
Teetering on that fine line between holding your whole world in the palm of her hand as if you are the only man that she would ever know
Or falling down piss-drunk in the street
Tonight, she’s been here too long and has worn out most of her welcome
Finishing her drink, she makes a move toward the door and, fighting with the barstool over her purse, crashes to the floor in a great heap of legs and ass
God, she must’ve had great lather a few years back
July 2003 | back-issues, fiction
a short story by J Eric Miller
My old man lived off the animals. Which is to say, he was an exploiter. He used to run a trap line, and he raised chinchillas in the basement. He shot bears for the gallbladders, deer and elk for their horns, and God knows what else. Cockfights, dog fights, raccoons chained to logs and forced to fight dogs, and so on. He ran exotic birds through the house; my father and I would burn the bodies of the bulk of the birds that died in transit, and we would try to clean up those that lived. Somebody would pick them up and give my father money. Mother kept a few, her pets, and she taught them to speak. My father never liked hearing them much. Neither did I.
She got fed up after a while. Probably with all the animals and the death and the fact my father never had a real job and most of the money we had came from places ordinary people wouldn’t consider legitimate. She wanted, I think, to lead a regular life. So she left.
I was seventeen. The morning after she left, my father took her birds out and went from one to another, wringing their necks. I guess he didn’t want them bringing up memories.
Those first seventeen years were filled with blood, and suffering, and death. You’d think it was my birthright. You’d think I’d be the same as my old man. But I wasn’t. I could hear the sound of those pet birds talking, and the sound of their necks breaking. That was the end of it.
And so, like my mother, I left.
Ten years later, and I don’t eat meat. I don’t wear leather, or wool, for that matter, or silk. I don’t eat eggs and I don’t drink milk. I try not to do anything that involves the exploitation of animals. A psychologist might say that I’m overcompensating. But I like to believe that if I had grown up the regular way that my mother wanted, I would have developed these convictions anyway.
In truth, it doesn’t matter. I believe what I believe.
I am involved. I am doing what I can. Trying to slip cogs out of the machine. Trying to remember, when I feel overwhelmed, that each individual suffering is worth alleviating, even if the overall problem is not solved. Break-ins, thefts, and destruction: testing laboratories, hen batteries, fur farms. Sometimes we do more. Sometimes we do things that would make lesser people turn away. But of this I am certain: nothing will ever make me stop.
It is only that I want a break. Everybody needs a vacation sometime.
Ten years, and I haven’t seen my old man–shortly after the divorce, he moved into a cabin he owns in a Washington state forest–although I call him two or three times a year. We never really talk about anything; we just confirm that the other is alive. It’s obvious he’s gone downhill. You can hear the age in his voice. Sometimes, he doesn’t make much sense. I imagine empty cages with doors bent open; instruments, once sharp and shiny, now dull and rusted. It is important for me to believe that my father is no longer an exploiter. After all, he’d be a perfect target, even though he’s my dad.
The cabin is in a state of disrepair. And to my relief, there are no apparent victims about–no animals staked to the ground; no skins stretched on the outside walls; nothing crying out from some hidden place; nothing. There are, in fact, butterflies and hummingbirds in the air.
The old man is bent and gray. Hair hangs off his knuckles, out of his ears. He looks mean and wrinkled and when he smiles at me from the cabin door his face looks like a rubber mask. It is at once frightening and pathetic.
“What you up to, Pop?”
“I’ve got to tell you,” he says in the voice of a conspirator–and a fear runs through me–“that I’ve found particular signs. Absolute evidence. He is about…”
“Who’s about?”
“Bigfoot,” he hisses.
“What?”
“Bigfoot. He’s mine.” His eyes absolutely glow with purpose.
The relief is not as profound as you might think. In truth, I am undone by the pathos of it. I half wish that Bigfoot were, indeed, about. Even worse, I wish that my father might catch the creature so that the light–mean and stupid as it is–will not leave his eyes.
“Going to get him by God!”
The old man’s face is steady and determined now and I can no longer see the pathos. Rather, I am chilled by his intensity.
He feeds me potatoes and I ignore the bloody, store-bought meat he eats.
“You got a happy life?” he asks.
“I’m not unhappy.”
He nods and appears to think. “Me neither.”
“It’s thin line,” I say.
He looks at me. His face isn’t quite blank, but it is hard to read. I almost see a question there. I’m ready to say more. It is only through an act of will that I close my mouth and turn away.
“Let me show you something,” he says.
He lifts to the table a dirty folder full of cutouts from various magazines offering money for the live capture, or at least the dead body of, Bigfoot.
Artists’ renderings show the creature as sad-eyed and intelligent-looking, shoulders slumped as if with fatigue, with the face of a chimp, which reminds me of the faces of the many tortured, beaten and imprisoned animals I’ve seen.
“I’ll get the bastard,” my father says, but he’s no longer talking to me. He’s looking off, his head nodding and nodding, as if he has forgotten how to stop it.
I want to nudge him, maybe a bit roughly, as if he is a broken record, caught upon a skip. I rise and take my plate to the sink. My father goes to the window and stares out. Slack has drawn the wrinkles from his face. His lips are puckered, his head cocked slightly.
In the night, Bigfoot’s face comes to me sad, as it is in the drawings, but then it transforms, and I see the eyes of my father in the face of the beast, stupid and hungry. I sit up and can hear my old man breathing.
“I figgered you’d come here,” he tells me the next day.
“I’m not staying long. Just a few days.”
He smiles. “You don’t have to help me.”
“Help you what?”
He smiles even more broadly. “You don’t have to help my catch him. You can stay here anyway.”
“I didn’t come to help you.”
“I know. You came for help.”
He begins to laugh.
Each morning, he goes across an old bridge and into the forest. He carries a carefully maintained tranquilizer gun–I’ve used them myself in different circumstances–and a backpack. Hunched and hunkered, he disappears into the woods.
At night, I hear noises from the woods; they wake me from my sleep and I think about the creature. My father is always awake at these times. I find him at the window, perfectly still and focused.
When I dream at night, it is of either my old man or Bigfoot, or a combination of the two: the face is evil, then innocent; it is mean, then sad. When I wake I feel I haven’t slept at all.
I wait for my father during the day. I catch up on the reading I’ve avoided over the years. Frequently, I drift into naps–and I dream then, too. Sometimes it is of the animals I’ve helped, the ones who’d been broken so badly that their suffering could only be alleviated by death; or the thousands who are maimed, physically and psychologically, for the rest of their lives. I think of those I could not help, the ones who had to be left to their exploiters. Rarely do I dream of those animals whose rescues were accomplished cleanly.
In the day, with the weak warm sun on me, I dream, too of humans, the ones we’ve labeled evil, and the attempts to break them, their bodies and their minds.
Sometimes I wake still dreaming of the pain. Sometimes the pain of animals and humans blur into one throbbing mass. Then I snap out of it, emerging to the sound of birds, to the smell of my father, and, sometimes, to a deeper smell of some other creature in the forest. I feel watched, frightened, exposed.
The old man comes back limping. He doesn’t know to soak his feet. “Going to get him,” he says, “you bet.” He eats his bloody meat. He stares from the window.
And at night, something thrashes in the woods. Before coming here, I would have known it was only a bear or an elk or some other animal, large but identifiable. Now, I have to remind myself.
I am not sleeping enough. The dreams are following me too far into my waking. The sunlight is on my face but I can look right past it to the woods, where moss hangs like drapes in the darkness, above the stink of earth. I tell myself, get your mind straight. You’ve been weak before, many times. In every circumstance there is a moment of weakness. But weakness is something certain that a mind can overcome.
Overcome, I tell myself. Think straight. Take control. Overcome.
“Soon,” he says.
“What?”
“I’ll have him soon. You’ll see.”
I can hear the bones of my father creaking as he walks around the cabin. I ask nothing further.
I watch the old man go into the forest. He looks innocent and he looks evil. He looks sad and he looks cruel. I am not clear on other things, either: do I follow to hunt him or help him? Do I go to be hunted by him with the beast as bait or by the beast with him as bait?
There was a light rain last night and into this morning, and his recent tracks are easy to differentiate from those of previous journeys.
This forest is dark and crowded and dank. There is the drone of insects and the sound of small animals, and sometimes, a crashing sound from an animal much larger than me. My mind is clear. I tell myself to go forward, one step after the other.
I see a thin stand of aspen trees with sunshine pouring in. My father’s tracks veer off there, and I follow them. He is fifty yards in, lying at the base of a tree, his hands folded on his chest, his pack and rifle propped up beside him. Up close, I can hear his breath is long and deep. I look around. The woods are still. My father is still. I can hear his heart, or perhaps it is my own. Or perhaps it is the heartbeat of the creature. For a moment, I imagine that I am the Bigfoot my old man seeks. I imagine standing as that creature above my father, leaning down with large, black hands, and twisting without much effort the old man’s head, so that his neck snaps and it is over.
And I hear all of our hearts as that one heart.
A small black ant runs across my old man’s face. And I realize, he’s going to die, just like that, sometime soon, in peace, without really causing much more harm to the world.
April 2003 | back-issues, fiction
a fiction short by Scott Neumyer
([email]lecter323 [at] aol [dot] com[/email])
“You want to shoot some pool?” she asks as we walk past the beach, our arms brushing back and forth on the sides of our legs, the salty ocean breeze hanging over us like a thick fog. We’re coming up to the only bar in town. Her sister and brother-in-law have asked us to shoot a few racks before heading back to the house. I’m full of ice cream and not sure I can handle much more than a few minutes.
“I think I’m going to head back,” I tell her. “I’ve had it. I need to close my eyes for a few.” I grab her hand, bring it to my mouth, and kiss it quickly. Her fingers are sticky from the ice cream and it reminds me of when I was younger and more willing to shoot a few racks. “You go ahead. I’ll see you back at the house later, okay?”
“You sure?”
“Of course,” I say, although I’m not. “Have fun. Have one for me.”
“I’ll have a few,” she says as she pulls me in, kisses me, and runs off to catch up with Meg and Kevin.
I watch her and wonder if I’ve made the right decision, letting her go alone like that. I convince myself that I have and walk the half-mile to the house alone, stumble up the porch steps, and straight up the stairs to the room we’re sharing for the week.
I lie on the bed, snap my headphones onto my ears and close my eyes. One day left here and I’ve decided to listen to jazz while she shoots pool, sucks down colored drinks, and does God-knows what else. I’d say I’m depressed but I’d be lying. Scared is probably the better word.
* *
It’s late when I hear the bedroom door click open. I rub the sleep from my eyes, roll over and, strain to see her in the darkness. She slips into a pajama top and sweatpants, throws her clothes in the corner, and crawls into bed, careful not to disturb me.
“It’s late,” I say. She’s startled to hear that I’m awake and quickly pulls the blankets up to her neck.
“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. We lost track of time and just kept shooting.” She rolls her head on the pillow and looks straight into my face. “You’re not mad, are you?”
“No,” I tell her. “I’m just tired.”
She kisses me lightly on the forehead and turns on her side away from me. I stare at her smooth shoulders and strong back until we’re both asleep.
* *
The following afternoon we walk along the beach and sit on some rocks facing out into the ocean. They are smooth and clean but cold, not exactly made for sitting.
We talk about possibly living together when we get home, about maybe getting married.
“But not if you’re still at that job,” she says. “It’s slowly killing you.”
“I know,” I tell her and agree that I should leave but know I never will.
We sit on the rocks for a while and talk about the chances that we’ll be together forever, until she tells me that she’s cold. I say, “I know,” and we slip our sandals back on, walk up the beach to the house, pack our things, and drive home knowing more than we’d ever known before.
[b]Author’s Notes[/b]
Scott Neumyer is a writer from New Jersey. He has written reviews and commentary for DVD Angle (www.dvdangle.com). His fiction has appeared in 3AM Magazine and is forthcoming in Snow Monkey. He is working on a collection of short stories.
March 2003 | back-issues, fiction
a fiction short by Pasha Malla
([email]pasha [at] ekno [dot] com[/email])
[b]Rm #312 – Ludwig Van Beethoven[/b]
Mr. Beethoven checked in with only one piece of luggage, a leather- bound valise. He failed to tip either the doorman, or the bell boy. In the elevator he broke wind and blamed it on a child.
During his two-night stay, Mr. Beethoven amassed a substantial bill viewing pornographic films on pay-per-view television. Evidence of semen was found in the bedsheets, wastebasket, shower and bathroom sink. Upon departure he was heard to refer to the hotel as a “shithole” and refused to offer identification while paying by personal cheque.
But in the room where Mr. Beethoven stayed sound has changed. The door opens not with a creak, but the chirping of sparrows. The bathroom taps pour a desert wind. You speak and your voice comes out thunder.
[b]Rm #801 – female novelist[/b]
A certain prolific female novelist stayed recently for one night in Room 801. The novelist, who was listed in the registry under a pseudonym, mainly kept to herself, emerging only to use the ice machine and remark how pleased she was to “have a room of (her) own”.
The novelist was pleasant, but confrontational when it came to hotel policy. However, it should be noted that while she persistently questioned the necessity of specific check-out times, no one was at any point afraid of her.
One peculiarity has emerged from the novelist’s stay: Ms. Maria Jimenez, the chambermaid assigned to Room 801, has since been unable to tell stories. Ms. Jimenez, who has worked at the Sarnia Best Western for close to a decade, and is renowned among the hotel staff for her sense of humour and intriguing tales of “the old country”, has become plagued by the worry that each anecdote she recounts will only be a version of the memory of the last time she told it.
[b]Rm #609 – Tyco Brahe[/b]
Tyco Brahe was a delightful guest. He beguiled both staff and patrons alike with lectures on the cosmos. In the sauna, he was consistently the first one up to pour water on the rocks.
Mr. Brahe spent four nights at the Sarnia Best Western. He was cordial and clean. He tipped the chambermaids generously. He allowed the children of other guests to look through his telescope. Mr. Brahe did, however, become agitated when kept up by a fornicating couple in Room 607. He resorted at 2:14 a.m. to paging the front desk the concierge, while sympathetic, felt uncomfortable intervening.
The smell Mr. Brahe has left in Room 609 is queer. It is familiar. It is the smell of your own home or rather, that specific smell of other people’s homes you never assume your own to have, but of which you become suddenly aware only after returning from a lengthy vacation.
(Story first published in [url=http://www.opiummagazine.com/storymallawestern.html]Opium Magazine[/url])
(c)2003 Pasha Malla
February 2003 | back-issues, fiction
by Rey Martinez
([email]maxinquaye [at] aol [dot] com[/email])
Whenever I thought of such a thing, only warbled service announcements pulled into my mind. Attention wddwndkjwebwejbdjw or The next train leaving the station is on Track 52738dbbe. Nothing against the MTA PA operators, but they wouldn’t be playing Vegas anytime soon.
I’d probably never even have put the two words together if it weren’t for my poorly trained Jamaican auto mechanic. See, he’d promised my car fixed by Friday, but come Friday, there I stood on the 34th Street platform waiting for the R train to take me home. Hector (don’t ask me how a Jamaican gets that name) ruined my date with a precision I could only hope would eventually benefit my car.
Although as suave as any struggling DJ in his mid-thirties, I needed more than my Metrocard that night. It was my first date with Marisol, a 22 year old go-go dancer I met while playing the Limelight last week, and I still didn’t know if she was high when she slipped me her number.
At my age, anonymous sex with hard bodies was losing its appeal, both for me and whoever was involved. But as many times as my benevolent soul of a sister explained that I would never meet anyone decent in a club, I wanted to prove her wrong.
That’s what motivated me to invite all 105 lbs. of Marisol to an outdoor bistro near Madison Square Park. This was my new method of quality controlling the possible life partners I met at various gigs.
Fortunately, Marisol remembered our date, somewhat remembered me, and didn’t expect to be picked up. I arrived early, having caught the express, and waited outside the overpriced faux country club entrance to the place. I wore my best outfit–all black, hoping the trend of black making fat look fine was still in effect.
I chain-smoked three-quarters of my Merit Ultra Slims before she arrived, and we couldn’t have been more wrong for each other. Worse than mixing classic rock with jungle, or death metal with two-step garage.
Her outfit served two purposes–gaining the attention of any living creature with an ounce of testosterone and creating a painful embarrassment that lodged itself onto my stomach, continually designing new species of fart throughout the evening.
I hope she couldn’t read my discomfort. I tried my best to look pleased even though I had no car, little money, little hair in the light, and even less confidence outside my DJ booth.
Normally this bistro would have never allowed anyone dressed/undressed in such a fashion to dine in their fine establishment, but the curves on Marisol’s petite frame put the brakes on any of their moral codes.
She still wore the piercings, the tattoos, even the body glitter I remembered. A shame that’s all she offered, like a great album cover with little more than liner notes inside.
My sister’s laughing at me somewhere, that bitch.
After a meal, where the most interesting exchanges occurred between our waiter Mike and myself, we left. I was glad I couldn’t offer Marisol a ride home. It’s not like I could lose any more points. I’d already quit playing somewhere between the first and tenth time she managed to get her tongue ring caught on her fetuccini alfredo.
The street was empty. A light summer breeze carried the sounds of a lone trumpeter from his terrace down to our ears. I tried hard to figure out what tune was playing. Miles? Count?
Marisol’s bubble gum popping broke my trance. I had to get rid of her before someone called the cops. In the harsh street lamp light, she couldn’t have been more than 17, though her body was pushing a healthy 24.
I offered her a cigarette, and nothing more. She was accustomed to much more ? drugs, sex, and the kitchen sink, maybe both on the kitchen sink for all I knew. She walked south, I walked north, and the go-go dancers and pimps of the world joined my sister in mocking me all the way to the subway.
Before that night, I hadn’t taken the subway for over 5 years or so. I continued to be surprised at how things had changed. No graffiti, new tokens, newer Metrocards, and few panhandlers. In a strange way, I missed the old subway. This new and improved cousin didn’t feel New York the same way current hip-hop jived with its New York rap roots.
My luck, the only thing constant were the delays. Waiting on the platform, I heard a strange sound. It couldn’t have been a train. It had a soothing quality trains couldn’t afford. I walked towards the sound. It was followed by another and another. Then it changed just as quickly. The pitch rose then dropped as beats flew through the hot air.
Someone was playing music or playing with my head. I studied the people sitting on the benches I passed. They either didn’t notice the music or didn’t care. I continued down the platform. Finally, I came across the culprit. A pastel green fixture attached to the space reserved for the subway directional signs.
Two kids jockeyed for positions and raised their skinny arms to touch the spaces on the fixture. Just as they touched, lights came on and sounds were played. I’d seen many things in the city, but none as bizarre or sweet.
I smiled at the kids and joined in the rhythm, touching the bar and releasing some beats. The three of us played something Africaa Bambaataa, George Clinton, and Parliament would be proud of. The music we made served no purpose, but man were we happy.
Our concert came to an abrupt end as the subway pulled into the station. People got off, some carrying packages, others emotional baggage. And as they passed us we played a few notes on the guitar of the future. A few of the people smiled in bewilderment. It must have also been their first time experiencing this odd creation.
I boarded the subway with a smile on my face, despite the lack of air-conditioning or spare seats. The two boys boarded, exchanged looks, and quickly ran off the train. Through the scratched plexiglass, I spied them tuning up for another show. My subway pulled away and the last thing I heard were the beeps and hums of the strange green instrument which seemed to me a gift from the stars.
I need to ride the subway more often. I’d have never guessed the city would have paid for something so wonderful. What’s next, 2 turntables and a microphone for ratracers to scratch and relieve stress?
The ride was smooth, or maybe I just gave it the benefit of the doubt. I had seen a little of myself in those kids. During my own childhood, I had played with spoons, drums, even my calculator to make sounds that awakened things in people. I’d figured, why play the one millionth rendition of something tired, when you can create something new.
And at the Queens Plaza station, something new boarded the subway. A pair of Mexican mariachi wielding exquisite acoustic guitars began their serenade through the subway car. These guys were amazing. They pulled off harmonies and solos as the subway jarred its way through the tunnels. Nothing fazed them. Not the Asian woman hawking trinkets. Not the Spanish guy selling dead batteries. They even did a 2 step dance in their snakeskin boots. Fellow commuters with their noses in books or their headphones blaring suddenly forgot their distractions, transfixed by a unique sound that would not be ignored.
Now, despite Ms. Farnsworth’s best efforts in grades 7-9, I still cannot utter, let alone understand, more than three syllables of Spanglish. But it didn’t matter. The music had passion. More passion than I’ve ever seen any globe-trotting DJ exhibit. As they ended their set, they thanked everyone and used their hats for collection.
I caught elderly folks giving them greenbacks; I was in shock. Almost everyone on the train contributed something. I gave them a $5 because it was all I carried.
When I made it home, I felt like a new man. The creative juices were flowing and I made some of the best mix tapes of my career. But more important was the idea that sprouted from that night on the subway.
It took a week of riding the R back and forth, but I finally managed to track Alfonso and Alejandro down. I pitched them my idea, which was difficult considering my broken Spanish and their shattered English.
But they agreed. I booked us some studio time, laid down tracks, and mixed the whole thing into something no one had ever heard before. Their mariachi stylings infused with my house breakbeats and electronica became known as Tex-Mex and Decks. That’s us on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Now, whenever I see someone playing music in the subway, I look for one thing–potential. Whether it’s the Asian guy with the cello-looking thing, the black guy playing sax, the family band, the twins on guitar, the doo-wop brothers–they’re all better than you think. You just need to look past the bullshit inside your head and listen. You just might hear the sweet sounds of something new. I did.
(c)2002 Rey Martinez
[b]Author’s Note:[/b] By day, Rey Martinez masquerades as an advertising copywriter in New York City. He also moonlights as a writer with some integrity. And to bring the cliche full-circle, he is currently working on the Great American You-Know-What.
