THE IRONIC FANTASTIC #1
edited by
Rhys Hughes
An anthology of fantastic fiction
Copyright 2013 Rhys Hughes
Including (among others):
The Tellmenow Isitsöornot
A bumper collection of exactly 100 tales for only $4.99
Dedicated to
Rachel Kendall
editor of Sein und Werden
who asked me to guest-edit the issue that turned into this project.
Thanks also to the authors involved for their work and their patience.
Thanks also to the readers, in other words: YOU!!
Table of Contents
Hunted by Sissy Pantelis
The Phrygian Cap by Jason E. Rolfe
Viennese Whirl by Hannah F. Lawson
Keep Kharms and be an Absurdist by Rhys Hughes
Gogol for a Pint of Milk by Chris Kelso
A Duet in Reyes by Caleb Wilson
The Last Dictatorship by D.F. Lewis
Preacher Kim by Kristine Ong Muslim
Madam Mannequin by Douglas Thompson
The Watchman by Guarav Monga
Waitering for Godot by Bob Lock
I Heard it From a Friend Who by Nikhil Mane
Under the Clockwork Sun by Mark Lewis
The Nose by Bill West
Three Tributes to Daniil Kharms by Jason E. Rolfe
Space Opera by David Rix
The Doppelganger’s Nemesis by Terry Grimwood
The Women Who Point at Men’s Hearts by Steven Pirie
Puppet on a Wire by Tantra Bensko
FOREWORD
When I was first asked to guest-edit the Winter 2012/13 issue of Sein und Werden by the inestimable Rachel Kendall I instantly agreed to do so. It was an opportunity for me to solicit the kinds of short-stories that aren’t very popular in English speaking countries, the highly ironic type of fiction characteristic of continental European writers such as Calvino, Alfau, Queneau, Vian, Kharms, Pavić and Lem, with its emphasis on invention rather than characterisation, and lateral rather than empirical logic.
Absurdism and philosophical whimsy do exist in English literature: the existence of Lawrence Sterne, Maurice Richardson and B.S. Johnson is proof of that. But generally speaking the Anglophone lover of fantasy and genre work prefers straightforward and conventional material. Nothing too weird, nothing too unusual, nothing too original. This is a shame. There is a treasure trove of amazing work out there ready to be unearthed by anyone brave enough to try something different. Try, for instance, Boris Vian’s Froth on the Daydream and prepare to be amazed!
I wasn’t in a position to ask Boris Vian or Italo Calvino or Georges Perec or any of those greats for work, unfortunately, but I put the call out anyway; and writers responded, more than enough to make the project viable. This free ebook is the initial instalment in what I hope will become a long-running series of anthologies. I don’t plan on editing all of them, I hasten to add! I am not cut out to be an editor. I learned this the hard way. But I am sure a suitable editor or editors can be found.
In the meantime I hope you enjoy what follows!
Rhys Hughes, June 2013
HUNTED
Sissy Pantelis
The flower boat seemed like the most beautiful thing on the world when I saw it sailing on the sea. However, once I am inside it, I am scared. The sails made out of flowers sing a macabre melody and the wind takes it far away. And the ship is deserted, like a ghost ship lost on the ocean.
We approach an island; I can distinguish strange beautiful flowers that seem to be waiting for me. A wild laughter resounds into my mind; I am not reassured. Something invisible is threatening me in this place and the beauty of the place is dangerous like an assassin arrayed in an attractive disguise.
The island is a treasure of strange flowers. The first ones I focus on are like hearts. I hear a weak voice in my mind: “Have you ever thought that flowers have HEARTS?” I shudder and hurry away.
The next flower is alike a nest of lovers. “You murdered my love” says the voice in my mind. This must be a hallucination. I've never murdered anyone. I swear.
I see a red blossom. I am relieved. This will rescue me. I sense it and the feeling is so strong that it must be true. I advance toward it as if I were mesmerized...
The gentle blossom transforms into a headless flower dancer. “I'll have your head on a plate,” it says into my mind. A Salome-like flower. She will behead me like the dancer-princess who had beheaded St John. But…WHY? I have never wronged them! What do they want with me?
I want to run away, but my feet are stuck to the ground. At some distance, I see a flower-headed statue. I know that this is a metamorphosed witch. She has enchanted me and I cannot move.
When I turn my gaze at the red blossom, it has transformed again. The creatures dancing inside it are fiery demons. I am completely unable to move. I scream but no sound will come out of my mouth.
A creepy laughter resounds into my mind. I think it comes from the dancing demons, but when I stare again, the flower has turned into a musical instrument and the laughter has turned into music. This is the most beautiful, sad and macabre melody I've heard. I close my eyes and I put my hands on my ears. It's all to no avail, the music still echoes in my mind.
When I open my eyes, an animal-orchestra is there. I know I have to follow them. I hear laughter and whispers of weird words. Are they black magic spells? I am brought in front of the judges; they are all flowers. “You cut flowers to offer them to your girlfriend,” they say. “But everybody cuts flowers,” I reply. “Why do I have to pay?” Nobody answers me, nobody pays heed to me. They whisper; I know they are about to condemn me.
“Let's take his heart out of his body and turn it into a cactus,” they say. “This will teach him we've hearts too.”
I scream. I plead. They don't care.
Giant scissors approach me. They'll cut me and take my heart out. I run and run and run as fast as I can. I arrive at the port; I see a butterfly boat. I don't know how it happens, I am soon inside it. Relieved, I close my eyes. I am saved!
We approach another island; I can see mills. I'll get help there... The mills have butterfly wings. They turn fast and there is a whirlwind. Not able to resist it as it is too strong for me, I am taken inside it; it swirls and takes me far away. I don't enjoy this kind of travel.
Now, I am at last free, but I am transformed into a butterfly. I keep flying and I am afraid it will never stop. I land in front of a book. A fairy butterfly or something like that is in the book. “Do you remember when you caught me and pinned me in a book?” she asks in a melodious voice.
“This is unfair,” I protest. “I was only a child...”
She does not care. I struggle to flee in the woods, but the trees transform into hammers, knives scissors. I am forced to return to the book, I try to take refuge in it. I am now only a butterfly pinned in the book replacing the charming creature, which is now free; she flies cheerfully around me; her mellifluous laughter is like poisoned honey.
A huge dart comes toward me. I'll be pinned in this damned book forever. Even if I manage to escape I will be hunted and condemned again. Is this a mere nightmare or am I damned for eternity? I have probably offended a demon and this is how he takes his revenge: by tricking my mind into a ghastly joke, an infernal version of a jack-in the box.
THE PHRYGIAN CAP
Jason E. Rolfe
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Aux grands maux les grands remèdes. A week before the revolution reached Mainz, Paul Lacombe sat down on the cathedral steps and began knitting. “I’m knitting a cap,” he would say whenever anyone thought to ask. The sheer amount of wool surro
unding him staggered the imaginations of many a passerby. The scarlet color seemed far too loud for the quiet cathedral. “What kind of cap?” people would ask. “A Phrygian one,” Paul would invariably reply.
The conical cap with the top pulled forward had become fashionable again. During the days of the Roman Empire the cap signified freedom and the pursuit of liberty, albeit mistakenly so. The French at the time mistook the Phrygian cap for the pileus worn by the emancipated slaves of ancient Rome. The Phrygian cap’s Anatolian origins suggested an entirely different meaning. To the inhabitants of Phrygia these hats symbolized the failure of idealism in a harsh, often savage world. Also, they were worn by trash collectors. For the modern French, however, they re-represented freedom and the pursuit of liberty, and were considered haute couture by many a fashionable revolutionary.
“Who are you knitting this cap for?” A parishioner asked.
“Why, for the one I love,” Paul replied.
“Forgive my saying so, but it is an unusually large cap.”
Paul stopped knitting and looked up at the man’s head. “For you, perhaps.”
“But not for the one you love?”
“Goodness no! I only hope I have enough wool!”
It might seem somewhat unusual to the reader of this tale. It certainly appeared unusual to the parishioners entering the Mainz cathedral for evening mass; but Paul’s concerns were entirely valid. You see, the object of his innocent (yet undeniably naïve) affection was the cathedral itself. It ensnared his heart one cold winter’s eve when others, even those professing friendship, had cast Paul aside like so much Anatolian trash.
Love, they say, is blind. Unrequited love is deaf and dumb (not speechless, unfortunately. I mean unintelligent.) Paul enjoyed the cathedral’s company. She appreciated his. They spent many a moonlit night wandering the surrounding churchyard. They would often talk about life and love and the wild world around them. While they shared many similar views, their hopes and dreams differed considerably. Paul, for example, longed to see Rome while the cathedral seemed much more grounded. “Even if I could travel,” she would often say, “Why would I? Everything I need is right here in Mainz.”
“You would rather not see the ruins of Rome? What of the Coliseum, the Forum, the Vatican? What of Saint Peter’s Basilica? None of these things interest you?”
“I am perfectly happy right where I am!”
Paul found the prospect upsetting. He had dreamt his dreams for countless years. Love, his father once told him, is a demanding Goddess. To worship at her feet you must be prepared to sacrifice everything you have, everything you are.
“Is that what you did?” Paul had asked.
“Of course! Naturally I sinned and blasphemed, sought absolution and paid penance on a fairly regular basis. Sacrifice is such a disingenuous term.”
Paul surrendered in the end. Driven blind by faith and ardour he left his dreams of Rome behind and embraced the fancies of a life within the cathedral’s warm embrace. Still, having fuelled the flames of passion with his kindling dreams, Paul felt uncertain about the future he envisioned. The cathedral seemed reluctant to commit, and when pressed became evasive – argumentative even. “I’ve given you shelter,” she would often say. “I’ve given you food and drink and what have you given me? You do not need a hug, or a kiss, Paul. You need faith.”
“I do have faith,” Paul assured himself. “I just need to find a way to show her the very depths of my love. She is right. All I’ve done thus far is ask, ‘what is in this thing for me?’ I have not considered her at all!” Shortly after this epiphany the perfect opportunity arose for Paul to prove his love – the French Revolution.
I need not detail the causes (both legitimate and bastard) behind the revolution. They were what they were. Suffice to say these causes, and the people who inspired or were inspired by them committed acts of violence against cathedrals across France. Notre Dame, for example, suffered cruel and callous desecration during the early days of the revolution. Mobs of disenfranchised poor destroyed much of its religious imagery. The wanton destruction of cathedrals, the beheading of religious statuary, even the conversion of cathedrals and basilica into granaries became commonplace. Imagine transforming cathedrals into something meant to provide nourishment! The mere idea became the ghost that haunted Paul’s nightmares.
The night before the revolution reached Mainz, Paul finished knitting. “Do you really think your plan will work? Will your cap save me from rape and pillage?”
“Of course,” Paul replied. In truth he had his doubts. Would the revolutionaries be fooled by the disguise, or would they see through it? Would they take his head and desecrate the cathedral, or would they count the Mainz amongst their kind? Time alone would tell. At dusk he climbed the outside of the cathedral. He slipped the cap over the largest of the six spires, smiled, and sat down to await the dawn.
The rising sun brought revolution. The cathedral, bedecked in liberty’s symbolic cap, failed to fool the anarchists. They saw, not a fellow revolutionary, but an oversized church wearing the largest Phrygian cap they had ever seen. “It is pleasing to see,” their leader mused, “a symbol of freedom atop a symbol of religious oppression.” They met Paul on the cathedral steps. They asked his name and shook his hand, smiled and waved farewell, and proceeded to burn down the government buildings, open the jails, and guillotine the local nobles, much to Paul’s relief.
“It worked,” he said. “You are safe!”
“You have given me so much!” the cathedral said. “What can I offer in return?”
“Your hand,” Paul replied without pause. “I wish to marry you!”
“You cannot be serious! God would weep at such a union! The institution of marriage is meant for two human beings, not for a human being and an outstanding example of Romanesque architecture! To suggest otherwise is simply sinful!”
“But I love you!”
“Your love is an abomination! I suggest you confess your sins. If you truly love me, you will!”
Paul truly did love the cathedral, so he went inside to confess. Before he began he asked the priest, “Have you ever been in love?”
“My son,” the priest replied. “I am a man of the cloth! I am married to the church!”
For the second time in as many days Paul had an epiphany. Later that very week he went to Rome to become a priest.
VIENNESE WHIRL
Hannah F. Lawson
“What a wonderful day to be a writer!” I beamed to myself at the possibilities to be had at such a time and place as I scurried through the grey Vienna drizzle towards the inviting glow of the Café Central. Its imposing stone façade gave way to a cosy and coffee-scented interior, dreamy with the history of world-changing conversations. “Surely, in a place like this, frequented by Freud and Trotsky, fictionalized by the greats, I will find the characters who will accompany me on my great explorations, burst out of this bourgeois rut and investigate the mysteries of the darkest corners of this Earth. I could call it ‘Viennese Whirl’!” I chuckled to myself and made my way to the polished counter where a fine and studious gentleman was engaged in some learned pursuit, his head bowed low over the written word. He looked like a fine companion. I decided to inform him of his good fortune.
“Dear Sir, I do hate to disturb you from your reading material, but I would like to offer you a wonderful opportunity.” He looked up at me although his elbow remained casually propped on the smooth wooden counter. “The opportunity of being in a book! An adventurous story of derring-do, of gentlemanly camaraderie – there in print, in front of your very eyes. I could make you into any character you want.”
“No thank you, I’m just waiting for my coffee, little pastry to treat myself and I’m…”
“I could make you handsome, rich and famous, endow you with special powers!” I could understand this gentleman could not understand how he was so lucky as to have been chosen by me – it does take time sometimes for it to sink in.
??
?Well, I’m really trying to get into this book here, you see - with my coffee, if my waitress ever reappears.”
“You’re already in it – I was trying to be generous and help you out, but if you’re going to be like that then perhaps I’ll just make you ugly and troubled, and destitute. And smelly.”
“I told you I don’t want to be in your damn story.”
He was starting to grate on my nerves now. “Too late, you have been ever since the opening line… I mean when I walked in and stood next to you at the counter.”
“Now really old chap, this is getting very silly, won’t you let me get back to my reading?”
“I can do whatever I like in my own story. Maybe I will have you spill your coffee over your suave suit. Maybe I will make your bun roll onto the floor. How would you like that then, eh?” At that moment I could see in one of the large gilded mirrors the waitress approaching behind me; I shifted slightly as she brushed past me and unbalanced her sufficiently to knock the bun from her tray and lurch a slop of creamy beige foam over his lapel. I smirked, triumphantly.
“Look here, you’re being very silly. That wasn’t the omniscience of the writer changing fate, that was you nudging a waitress and spoiling my mid-morning snack. And you’re not even the writer anyway, you’re only the narrator. Look, you don’t even have a pen.”
I could feel my anger towards him growing, but I thought I would play him at his own game.
“And who are you then, thinking you’re more important than me, the writer – I mean the narrator?”
“Actually I am more important than you, I’m the reader.”
I laughed heartily – the fellow was at least trying to be jovial now, even if he was something of a simpleton. “And what is it that you are reading that’s so important, my good man?” I decided to humour him. He held it up to me.
“Take a look for yourself.” I ran my fingers across the title. Viennese Whirl. I felt a chill, despite the soft candlelight and distant hiss of the kitchens.