“Why are you here?”
Yikes
She’s bored
She’s only dangerous
when she’s bored
‘I would think that is obvious
I’m here because I’m not all there …’

“No really
what are you doing?”
I hold up the paper
She is not pleased

“When am I going to get a straight answer from you?”
‘When you ask a straight question …’

“Seriously …”
‘Why don’t you go play with the animals
or the weather or something ….’
Hands on hips
Now I’m in trouble

I put the comics down
Without seeing how the strange furry thing
is getting out of this mess …
I find the center and touch that place
that most people don’t touch
And pull a crack in the wall
The thunder of the rending startles her
and she is not happy with the dust
But I can see
this appeals to her sense of adventure

I step through the crack and wait
At length she shows up
with a flashlight
As though it would be dark here

“What is this place
Are we on Mars?”
‘This is the place of This’

“This?”

‘This’
silence
I find a flower in the debris
‘As in *this* flower’
nothing
I pull the cover from a half finished canvas
Revealing a calm meadow
I point to the canvas
‘As in *this* meadow
Why *this* meadow and not another?’

“Oh I get it
like one of those
*one hand clapping* things …”
‘Crudely put
But yes’

She spends considerable time
(I use the term ‘time’ here loosely
Since technically we are outside of objective time)

She finds all manner of glass jars
with wonderfully articulated graphic characters
filled with the most exotic … things
The Tears of Eve
The Four of Thorns
A preserved unicorn horn

She finds all kinds of intricate devices
Covered with the most interesting schema
Some still powered and functional
A death ray gun complete with sensor
A pair of X-ray glasses
Secret decoder rings with glowing studs

She finds models of castles
Casting of dragon footprints
One of my favorite old songs …

She is getting tired
She sits on an ancient Greek column
I think it was Corinthian …

“Why did you bring me here?”
‘Aren’t we having fun?’
“Why are you here?”
‘I am here …
I can’t answer this question
to your satisfaction’

“Don’t know why I should care
I don’t even know why I’m here”
‘Oh
That I can answer
You are here because you chose to be’
“What the freak is that supposed to mean?”
She turns utterly baffled
“What is the meaning of Life
What is the purpose?”

From the rubble I pull The Tome
(I keep it there for just such occasions)
Dust it off with a flourish
and present it to her
‘You will know the purpose to Life
When you reach for this Book’
“The truth is in there?”
‘In as much as it is anywhere …’
And of course she takes the book
“There’s a mirror in here
Isn’t there?”
‘Technically no
Not in the sense that you mean’

She opens to the first page
Blank
As are all the others

“I thought this was the meaning”
‘No the purpose of life is to reach for the book
To search for the answer’
“but I want to know the answer!”
‘Absolutely!’
“You’re not going to tell me are you?”
‘I just did’
“What’s the answer?”
‘Exactly!’

Slowly the glow inside her spreads
As the Light dawns on her
“You are such an ass”
‘I know’
“You want some lunch?”
‘Sure
Do we have any of those pickle things
Your mom makes?’

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with a child, needles and radiation
with pen and ink.
I was content.

But the unmade future
imposed itself,
and I saw in every mirror, each sink

of still water the yellow eyes,
a flat chest,
and remembered the machines

and their hard-edged courtship,
and then one evening when the snows
were sharp my daughter

fell through air, needle thin,
and was gone.
I could have died then.

But was she ever there?
I was foolish
to unmake the future; impressions remained

despite my erasures. Now I wait
with pen and ink for the lump to rise,
for the clean white sheets

and machines,
and the crisp bite
of the familiar needles.

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The ogre was hideous and foul smelling but he owned the finest candy shop in town. He made every gumdrop, every candy cane, every licorice stick with his own wart covered hands, helped only by his daughter, a creature, poor lass, almost as ugly as he.

Even as a child, she resembled an old woman, her hooked nose almost meeting her pointed chin, her tiny eyes pink as a rodent’s. Adolescence did nothing to improve her looks. She had no friends. Her only contact with other young people came when she waited on customers in the shop.

All her life she had been surrounded by sugar. It was all she ate, for her father would not share with her the raw meat that constituted his own diet. “Raw meat! The bloodier the better! No, keep your sticky fingers away! This is food for grown ups, girl.”

When children, especially plump ones came into the shop, he stared at them, salivating, until their parents dragged them away, muttering and glaring. We would have no customers at all, she thought, if our candy were not the best in town.

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Stranded.

The pain in my chest never leaves. It won’t go. If my eyes hadn’t dried up to dust I would cry until the stars fell drunkenly out of the sky like ash from distant fires. As you can see, I’ve neither eyes nor ears nor any tongue to speak of. But I know you’re there; I can feel you. I know you can hear me, too. Stay.

Listen, please. I can’t get up and make you. Humor a dying old man, a dead and gone old man. Listen.

You’ve probably heard of me.

My name is Brom Bones, and I can see it all now, as though I were perched atop the tallest trees.

~*~

He came like he went, but the way he came back was completely different. Terrible. I’m sorry. I’ll try and go in order. The events of that dark time have run again and again across the hollow space that was my mind, behind the black pits that were my eyes. I’ll try and go in order.

Ichabod Crane bobbed up to town sitting in the back of an applecart, two cases with him, his knees up to his chin. I remember sitting with some friends, when the children dashed past us, speaking of the new schoolmaster, calling him “the Cricket-Man,” due to his long legs and reedy voice. My friends and I dashed off, the summer air warm in our lungs, following the children, mainly out of curiosity.

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Mother came out of the bathroom in a robe, a fuzzy towel wrapped around her hair. She went to her room and closed the door. Curtis went downstairs and sat on the living room floor with paper and a box of crayons. He heard the blow dryer. A half hour later she came downstairs in high heels. Curtis held up his picture, but she said, “Not now, honey.” She went to the mirror and touched her hair, then stood with her head cocked as if trying to remember something. Seeing Curtis, she smiled. He came across the room and gave his picture to her.

She held the Manila paper. “This is so beautiful.”

The doorbell rang. Mother ran to get it. The babysitter came in, shedding her coat and throwing a book on the couch. Mother lifted the curtain beside the door. The babysitter came over to Curtis.

“Hey, Curtis,” she said. “What you got there?”

Curtis showed her. The drawing was of a big red cat holding a little yellow cat’s paw. The big cat was round and its arms were sticks. The babysitter smiled.

“This Fatcat?”

Curtis nodded. “He didn’t want me to draw him. He says he’s too fat.”

“Huh.”

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The other day
you sent me a sealed letter containing a curse.
It must sadden you to learn
that I did not fall for it
and also
that the unfortunate golem messenger
who gave me the letter and then
tried to crush me
is now again just lifeless mud.
Your harpy friends
that recently paid me a visit
met a likewise unfortunate end.
I killed your hired assassins
and bested your summoned devil creatures,
I cured the deathly plague you sent
and never ate from your poisoned apples.
I didn’t lose my footing
on the slippery top stair either, sorry.
Your mage fire never burned my house
and that voodoo thing you did with my hair
had no effect as it was poor Fido’s hair
(and a real messy thing you did to Fido,
I must say).
So it is, my dearest colleague, that I write
to inform you that I am your superior in our craft.
Try to accept it with what honor and dignity
you can summon (no pun intended).
Oh, and you may wish to get your affairs in order
for this note is a trigger
for the spell that I put on you not so long ago.

Goodbye my dearest colleague!

Yours,

Abra K. Da’Bra

post scribble:
Do not look up.

Alexandra Seidel likes strawberries and is very averse to pink and/or frilly clothing. You don’t need pink and/or frilly if you can go black. She also happens to write prose and poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Bottom Of The World magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Foundling Review, Nights And Weekends, 34thParallel, and Word Riot.

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She stood behind the counter.
Sad-eyed weeping—
her moan tore through me,
heart exploding beat after beat
as she wailed for another dead patient.
I couldn’t move, boots treading
two shades of gold.

I’d heard she was a nurse;
I’d heard she died in labor;
I even heard she groped
one of the 1st shift janitors
and left him blue-balled for a week.

None of it prepared me
to see through her, though,
the pots clanging above her gray presence.
Her black hair had been cropped close,
cobalt eyes and pale lips
that trembled in the transparency.
Baby boy blue dress—
the smell of baked apples that beat away
the putrid scent of Newport Memorial—
the banshee voice shrieking
like my ex-wife’s years ago.

The second the shock unwound
and she glared through me,
I backed away,
sliding in the cold urine,
slipping from the increasing shriek
of hell in all her tiny form.
I grabbed my troublesome balls,
the ones that begged
the chase of a sure fling
into the night shift forever ago,
and never looked back
to see if she smiled.

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Down in Mexico, Quentin relaxed. Freed from corporate life, he uncoiled, unfurled in ways that surprised even him. His personal dress code followed the generally loosening of his whole being, from starched shirt collars to tee shirts, Italian loafers to sandals. The transformation took a surprisingly short amount of time. Two sets of books; it was something he had grown accustomed to. It felt as if it was largely a good thing, though he wondered sometimes if it would not make him unrecognizable to those who had known him in the north, most notably his wife. The Mexicans were different; more relaxed themselves. Though, like his own new-found looseness, it was sometimes unsettling.

Take the skeleton.

The townspeople had to see it — but they were ignoring it. The problem with the Mexicans was that they didn’t fear the dead, so they have no good ghost stories. Can’t scare them. They’ll tell you they’ve got one, but then midway through it’ll take a sharp Carlos Castaneda turn into magical realism and finish up in the fantastic rather than the dreadful. Quentin would think of this every night as he rolled over on the filthy mattress that served as his bed and watched the skeleton dance. He could not remember when it had appeared, though it had certainly not been there the first night. The days and weeks had blended together in a half-remembered blur; a kind of heat and tequila induced fever. The skeleton danced noiselessly in the village’s tiny plaza, all alone in the light of the moon. It was a strange and terrifying sight, fully articulated and certainly real. But why did it make no sound? After watching it for a while, Quentin rolled over and reached down to find a bottle with a little tequila left in it. He had only to keep lifting them until he found one; they sprouted all over the uneven brick floor like weird, clear glass night flowers, nearly all of them empty. He lifted it to his lips, letting the last two ounces or so run down his throat. He’d have the girl get some more in the morning

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I know I’m smiling but I can’t quite look you in the eye.

I say I’m glad you elected to have the surgery. The rest is left unsaid. It’s better that way. The conversation is implied. There are too many pitfalls if we get into the details. I don’t need to say I know it seems a little strange at first. I don’t need to say but, trust me. I’m a doctor. I don’t need to say I’ve had it done myself, you know. I don’t need to say it’s the only way to go if you want to eat meat these days. If you’ve showed up in my office we both know precisely why you’re here.

You just can’t live without it. I understand. We were raised like that and it’s hard to change your ways.

For a while, as the climate changed and meat got scarce, we just tightened our belts in other places and cut down a bit on portion size. But then the oceans went barren. A few droughts thinned out the already thinning herds. Things got bad. Suddenly, you couldn’t afford a steak unless you had a couple thousand dollars in your pocket. For a while you saved your money. Treated yourself now and then. Soon, couldn’t even afford that. You became a vegetarian out of pure financial necessity. But when you stared down at your broccoli you always thought about it. Couldn’t get the smell out of your nostrils. Phantom flavors haunted your tongue. At night, sleeping next to your wife, you dreamed you found her steaming on your plate.

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So, what’s your deal?
If you’d have said it outright yesterday,
even I would have listened to you.
Or do you want to be a writer,
forever published in tile grout, lacking
what it really doesn’t take to do well, you opt for this —
A captive audience finds this shit so… moving,
but only for a while. You were no fucking Dickens,
man and your final words will one day be filed under “T”

If I had to do it…
I mean, if I had to write one,
just to show you how it’s done,
to kill eternity’s time a while, I’d say:
“The only thing I’ll miss is beauty.” But
I already do, and so am done.

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