"I have a mental abacus." I looked over at the man who spoke, but before getting a good glimpse, he turned away and put a hand on my shoulder, "Don't look, it's too distracting." I turned away and wondered how this fellow had sat down without me noticing. "I have a mental abacus," the faceless man repeated, "This is the thousandth bar I've been to. After only two, I learned that the sight of me is too much, after three I learned to avoid bars with mirrors." Needless to say, the curiosity tore at me — some stranger was talking to me and telling me not to look at him — I figured the guy had to be disfigured and loopy.
"Okay," I smiled and nodded with no clue where this was going — maybe he was trying to pick me up — I got uncomfortable, squirmed on the vinyl cushion and wished the stool wasn't bolted to the floor; before I could make a lewd comment about the barmistress, the guy held up a business envelope.
"This is how it's gonna go — I've failed at this 999 times, this is my last shot. It's easy for everyone else — you have a few pitchers, a few shots, get stupid and groan out your mundane pains and everybody sympathizes and goes home happy — or pretends to. Well it ain't so easy for me. I've got real problems. So this is how it's gonna go." I'm crawling inside to look this guy in the eyes and figure out if he's danger-crazy, but I'm petrified by the intensity of this voice that will not be sourced. "I'm gonna give you this envelope and go to the other side of the bar. You're gonna open it, read the story, and when you're done, I'll come back over; you're gonna look me in the eyes, pat me on the back and tell me you've been there; then, I'm gonna nod, wipe a tear and say 'plenty more fish in the sea.' After that, I leave and we never see each other again. I've failed this 999 times, you fuck it up and I'll gut you to your soul and throw it to the imps — I know a few."
Shaking with anticipation, I took the envelope and tore it open as he sat silently. He took the whole thing back when he left, but if he wanted me to keep it quiet, he should have said; I have a photographic memory. In delicate, swooping letters, he had written —
Dear Whoever Must Read or Die,
Duty bound to make a full scraping, I descend. It's not a dirty dumpster, but in the corners rot what even maggots can't digest — festering Easter caramels. I know they're Easter caramels because I threw them there. She wasn't coming back anyway. I knew, when I wouldn't wear the artificial goiter, that she'd had done with me. What's with dressing up? A riding thong and I'm rock-ready.
So she let me wait with a pocketful of caramels, in the park, behind the rec center until two days had passed the moon was rising full. She knew the lycanthropy would get me moving. Just before I started changing, I stuck my fingers into the plastic wrapped goo in my pants, ran to the dumpster and chucked the mess. I know the caramels are still there. I can hear them sparking with electricity. If I peeked inside, I know they'd be glowing blue or green.
So that was that, I woke up the next morning naked in a culvert with blood on my face and feathers in my mouth, but I was a free and single man. I peeked out of the concrete tube to get my bearings and delighted to see cow pastures spreading off in the distance without a human in sight. Darting out towards a stand of oaks, I saw a bit of smoke like from a chimney out past it and veered away from the copse and headed for the thicker woods to my left.
It was an old fashioned North Florida live-oak forest — not one of the new-fangled pine farms that's all trees in rows. There were some clusters of pine and palmetto, but for the most, it was wide canopy arms and blackberry vines. I took a lot of thorns at the outset, but at the first palmetto stand I chatted up a few lady roaches and flirted them into stitching me a supple, yet rugged, suit of fronds and needles. I felt dapper all bedecked in two tones complete with hat, tie and vest. The undershirt was a little scratchy, but a lonely black widow stitched some silk into it after I tossed her a few compliments.
How could I be so callous? How could I tease these women's hearts for my pleasure and profit? I know you're asking. I had been broken, I tell you — crushed. I was only pulpy pain — How could I care for these women? How could I feel for their little flickers at a passer-by? My life's heart was stolen and trampled. Had I not been a were-weasel, I would have died. Had these women not clothed me, I would have wandered naked into the wide acidic ocean of the sky — dissolved into a thousand cancers. I was true love to neither roach nor spider. Theirs was just a petty hurt compared to mine.
Well, you can see I've told this story a thousand times, so I know what you'll ask next. No one cares about my personal experience, the love I felt, nor the way she danced in my eyes even when she slept. Everyone asks, "Were-weasel? How did you become a were-weasel?"
What has that to do with anything! Obviously, I was bitten by a were-weasel! Damn thing nearly killed me, if I didn't have that magic silver tie-tack the fairies gave me, I'd have been dead for sure, but what do night-creatures and magic tie-tacks of fancy dancing have to do with the electric caramels in the dumpster?
So that's the problem with the scraping. The whole iron bin is electrified. A person can't get within ten feet of it without his hair stands on end. In a fit of desperation, I tried, once, to clean it out. What with armageddon raging and blue-eyed Lucifer slashing at a solemn god just a few yards away, I thought for sure the day of judgment had come. No way was I standing before St. Peter knowing those caramels were in there, pulsing like an angry hoard of ionized microscopic zombies. I dodged under a sweeping blow of Satan's flaming sword and nearly touched the dumpster, but the wattage blew me back and burnt my shaggy fur down to the skin; the last image I remember before waking up, thirty feet from where I'd been with my horns still smoking, was the devil's blade clean lopping off the friendly head of God.
Of course, God isn't dead. This always starts arguments one way of the other: There is no God, or the devil can't cut God's head off, or God doesn't have a head or how can God not be dead if his head got cut off? To the first, well — what thinking person would say there is nothing that is the sum of everything? To the others: I'm not saying God got his one and only head cut off — just one friendly head. And anyway — that's all just a tangent. You're getting me off course, this is about my love and the caramels.
I met her in a taxi; we shared a fare for a little ways. She was going to Piccadilly Circus; I was on a counter-espionage mission to recruit flatterers from the eight circle of Hell to refute the praises being heaped upon our corrupt king. After three years of circling the continent, our driver finally gave up and told us that both were equally impossible to reach by taxi from Orlando, even if we got the taxi at the airport.
Once he pointed this out, we shared an embarrassed chuckle and parted ways. I found out years later that she gave up on the circus. I faked suicide, slipped out of my extra body through a side mounted escape zipper, and left it on the thorns. After sneaking down the stream of burning shit on boots of woven adulterers and grabbing up a few choice sycophants, I took off to the broken gates. At the exit, the imps tried to give me some trouble, but I showed them my Life membership card and explained very carefully that, if they didn't let me out with these souls as recompense, I would put together a nasty false imprisonment lawsuit and own all the souls in Hell before I was through. They weren't happy about it, and did a lot of mumbling, but the whole bunch of them stood aside and lowered their heads, drabbling their cock-noses in the flaming sand.
I'm sorry, by the way; you see how hard it is for me to tell this story. How can I clean the thing out if I can't reach the receptacle? But these aren't my tangents. I want to share the pain. I've tried a thousand times to clean this out of my mind and get it off my chest, or whatever. These are the tangents of a thousand listeners. Each next time I tell the story — I deal with another objection or interjection in advance — still — more questions — more tangents — and I've never been able to get to the caramels. I loved her and she left me waiting — There, I said it. I bought ten caramels on Good Friday and I waited; Mary never came.
For two nights, it rained and I could feel the moon-madness building, but I waited. I stood behind the rec center and the rain carried up to my knees. Small houses began floating by, then bigger houses, but I was underwater, looking up, so I'm not sure if I saw the White House, but I watched an enormously deep foundation in the right shape pass over me, while I stood there, insisting she would come. On Easter Sunday, after the waters had passed, as the Sun set and the full Moon rose, I could wait no more.
Now do what you must,
Sincerely,
The Person Beside You
You must imagine, as I read it I kept wanting to look over at the mad composer, but I was compelled to each next paragraph, sentence, word and letter. When I finished, I leaned back with an amused grin and turned to see the author staring me in the face. He stood beside my stool in a well-worn, but finely-woven, suit of brown and green; he pulled a rough derby off his furry head and I saw two tiny char-black horns poking through a mat of dun-colored hair. He reached out to take the letter without moving his red eyes from mine. "I've been there, man," I heard my voice say, and I pattered him on the back. He lowered his head, ran a hand beneath his brow, and left.
Undeen is the only living shaved satyr he knows. Often, his sawed, cauterized and skinned-over horns attempt to rebreak the surface of his scalp; this creates uncomfortable scabbing; as drifts of time have buried his flute, stolen his nymphs and set him like the caged tiger that redefines the prison of his choice, sometimes he barbecues and imagines slowly broil-smoking the flesh of those that have stolen his glades and groves, driving him into domesticity.
Being that there is no sheltered space to fall back to, and the fey have grown thin; he seeks his fading sibs, trying to recall their names.
Comments (closed)
Levent Canyas
2009-11-14 17:39:38
Awesome Ryan! Great one man, much love & respect - Lev-eee