Whatever the case, I made you step nearer and then nearer. The dark sea parted, the waves of commuters flowed around you and behind you, offering your up to me, peeling and presenting you like a ripe fruit. The moon shuffled off its chiffon dress of clouds at just this moment, right on cue, and strutted out to centre stage. Her moonlight landing on your cheek and brow, caressing, painting you, giving your features new life. You had seen me then, truly, what all the others missed. No longer focussed on your own reflection like all the selfish ones, you were gazing through the glass and seeing me, drinking down my beauty in long cool gulps. I reached out, or was it you? I so quickly lost track of who was which, and what was where, in everything that came thereafter. The glass shattered into so many deadly triangles, like guillotines, all sliding down. The panic of fragments, tinkling like waterfalls and raging torrents, the scream of glass on flesh.
And you, poor fool, my Ulysses, you crumpled in and bled at my feet as if weeping, crying blood, your life’s essence ebbing away by the second as the burglar alarms screamed and howled and… dare I use the word? –Those whining ambulances and police cars. Yes, sirens… I should never have loaned them such a beautiful word and let them turn it into things so ugly to the ears.
So I stepped out into the night, stepping over my momentary lover, steeping over the threshold of the broken shards of window. I left him behind like discarded clothes, with the quick revelatory step of nakedness unveiled. I was free at last and felt the kiss and caress of the cool evening breeze around my neck and ankles. My dress flowed in the city’s bustle, I mingled, I slithered like a tigress until I was lost among the crowds. I was nobody and everyone, perfect, plastic face. How I enjoyed all those stares upon me. My years as a mirror-thing will never leave me. I still love to gather and reflect, focus and refract, Madame Magnet, queen of glances.
So many bars and clubs, they served me when my ice-cold fingers touched or coaxed their lips and brushed their groins and thighs. I moved through all the lonely places, unspeaking, unassailable, tantalising, unreachable, unreal. Object of all the dreams of the passing millions, they polished me like a faceted diamond. I spun beneath the myriad lights, turning, flashing. I became so many people, fragments of strangers, projected splices of film, a screen on which a thousand strangers sprang to life and died again in an instant, in the minds of those who watched me, the admirers, the voyeurs. Like the flames of a fire I burned for all of them until they sweated, until they cried out in pain.
In Pigalle, on Rue St Denis, I let one of them catch up with me. He had the mark of death on him, the moon sailed in his eyes and he longed to die, though he didn’t even know it himself. He yearned to bleed his essence into the Seine. As he kissed my cheek and found my skin impossibly hard and cold, I drew the triangle of glass I had carried with me in my pocket. As he clutched my hand, its fingers brutally hard and sharp, I lifted my glass shard with my other hand and cut his throat as he sobbed and shuddered.
Oh the shattering of window fragments. The guillotine of the moment, when a thousand stars come crashing down out of a cold winter sky and the frosted pavements glitter like tinsel. The eternal cry from a human throat, newborn baby or buck in the throws of passion, what’s the difference. This is the breath of life that gives me passion, that animates, that sets me free, and sets me out once more into the world. I am anonymous, given face, for the night. Mannequin man.
When morning comes the policemen interview me. They tell me I am delusional. That I smashed a window and stole pieces of a mannequin. That I am a transvestite, an infamous homosexual and petty criminal. That I killed a man for no reason and tossed his severed arm into the Seine. I know nothing of any of this. I am wiped clean each night. I wear a different costume every day. I remember nothing. Write your stories in your little notebooks. Give me an identity. Anything will do. I will be someone else anyway, by the time you wake up again. If you ever do.
THE WATCHMAN
Guarav Monga
She came in through the gate of the University. The watchman's chair was empty.
She walked down a broad road with fir trees on either side. A man dressed up as a watchman came running after her and donned his hat as soon as he addressed her.
“Who are you?” she inquired.
“I am none other than the Watchman,” he replied.
She continued walking down the broad road with fir trees on either side. He went after her.
“What do you want?” she spoke in a slightly louder voice this time.
|I just wanted to know how you entered the University? You see, I am the watchman here.” He slid his neck side to side.
“I walked in through there.” She pointed towards the gate which already seemed so far away. He followed her finger and they both stared at the gate. The watchman then stared at the empty chair.
“Okay then,” he said after a slight pause, “now tell me, where was I?”
WAITERING FOR GODOT
Bob Lock
“Do you serve Earl Grey?” the moustachioed man enquired politely.
The young waiter looked perplexed. “Is he a tall man with grey hair and a limp?” He asked.
“What? No, it’s tea with bergamot.”
The blank expression on the young man’s face competed with the empty notepad he was holding and won. Then he scratched his head with the stub of the pencil he carried in his other hand and said, “He spells his name with a t and a bergamot, is that like an accent?”
A long sigh quivered the moustache as the man sitting at the table tried to stop it escaping and then re-attached it to his face where it squirmed beneath his fingers until finally calming down.
“No, it’s a beverage. It is tea with a hint of bergamot orange.”
“Oh... so who is the man with grey hair and a limp?”
The moustache leapt into the milk jug and drowned itself. “That, doesn’t concern me, young man.” The un-moustachioed man said as he sadly watched the demise of his whiskers. “I would like a pot of tea if at all possible. Or do I have to ask to see the manager?”
“The manager isn’t here, sir.”
“Well... if you bring me my pot of tea I won’t have to ask to see him now will I?” The man said as he rubbed a finger over his naked upper lip.
“Yes, sir, um... but you couldn’t see him anyway because he isn’t here.”
The man’s face began to turn a dangerous shade of red. “Are you jesting with me you young buffoon? Do you know who I am?”
The pencil scratched furiously at the waiter’s scalp and flakes of scabby dandruff fell like the first snow of winter, disappearing against the white background of the table-cloth and into the bowl of sugar. “Are you Earl Grey, sir?”
“That’s it!” The man thumped the table causing the cutlery to leap and tinkle. “I’ll have your job for this!”
The young man, with an air of resignation, took of his white jacket and handed it to the confused customer.
“It doesn’t pay very well sir and it’s not really my job. I’m just helping out a friend,” he said and placed the name badge with Godot written on it onto the table and walked out whilst the un-moustachioed man tried to follow his moustache’s example and drown himself in the milk jug.
I HEARD IT FROM A FRIEND WHO
(a tribute story to Daniil Kharms)
Nikhil Mane
This might merely be an urbane legend.
It is said that Augustin Orlov, of the Dobrozny Bratva, loved beans.
He simply adored those little things and ate them every day. He carried a can of beans on his immense person whenever he moved around. Due to his immense person, this moving around was not very frequent.
Now, someone somewhere on the local forums had a bright idea. They decided, quite arbitrarily, that they had heard that Augustin Orlov had a fetish. And that this fetish involved making love to beautiful women covered in beans.
Can you imagine that? The sight of tight, white flesh and stick brown beans and sauce and bodily
condiments is enough to drive a man crazy, I suppose. But then that might just be my neighbor, Tom Stevenson.
Tom Stevenson, let me tell you, is a very odd man. And I don’t use the word ‘odd’ loosely. Tom Stevenson reads books. I don’t know why he does that but he does do that. Someone told me once that he does it because of Reginald Stevenson, his father.
Reginald Stevenson was the fastest man in the neighbourhood until one day some other man discovered him with this other man’s wife in this other man’s bed. Well, this other man happened to have a gun on him, conveniently, and he shot Reginald Stevenson in the nuts before shooting him in the guts and left him bleeding like a stuck pig. I have no idea what a stuck pig is but I suppose it must be rather bloody.
And I heard it from a friend that, when Kryzynetsov heard about this, he promptly fainted. Seeing this, his wife fainted and their dog ran out on the street howling. It was hit by a car and it died on the street. It was a good dog.
Sharma and Sharma who lived opposite Kryzynetsov saw the dog die while they were mowing their respective lawns. Sharma #1 thought it was rather funny while Sharma #2 thought it was not funny at all. They ended up arguing and the argument grew into a fight and gradually festered into a blood feud that is going on till this day. Not a day passes by without one of the Sharmas throwing blood at the other Sharma’s house.
Later when Kryzynetsov woke up and his wife had woken up, they found out about the dead dog. They both wept before consoling each other through some rather weird sex on the porch. Rett’s wife happened to see this from a window and, she also happened to be standing on a chair at that moment, fell off. She hit a kitchen cabinet on her short trip down and died. Some say she died in mid air but you can take my word on it being a load of dead dog.
Butler's children ran out when they heard of the news of Mrs. Rett’s death. They saw something shiny in their own pond. It only turned out to be some active radioactive element. No one has a clue how it got there or how the children found it without the supervision of some adult.
There was a meeting that night and on their way to the meeting the Chans met with a car accident. They were walking, down the street, when suddenly and rather unexpectedly a car fell on them. It was a good car though.
Jenkins went mad after dinner and Jürgen was watching telly when the it burst and he died from a frightened heart and Leslie cooked a bad batch of cookies that killed her, Michael and their son but it was only bad luck that killed Terese who shot herself.
Bald Yaeger and Hairy Yaeger are alcoholics and there is a bet going down at the pub as to whose liver will give up first. I am betting on Bald Yaeger because I do not like him and also because Hairy Yaeger owes me money. And who will pay me when he dies, you tell me that?
Where was I again?”
“Augustin Orlov?”
“Oh yeah, he died in his sleep yesterday.”
UNDER THE CLOCKWORK SUN
Mark Lewis
Under the clockwork sun there was a coiled city that slowly loosened, having been wound up at the beginning of time, by a party or parties unknown. No two timepieces in the city agreed. That is to say, from the smallest pocket watch to the Brass Cathedral’s clock, no two showed the same time. The anti-synchronisation was immaculate. There was a timepiece in the city for every minute of the day, so it was always every possible time, simultaneously.
No two citizens could agree a time, and so there was no physical interaction. There were no meetings. There were no organisations. No-one could occupy the same moment in time together, as each citizen occupied the time controlled by one timepiece.
And there was no murder, no riot, no crime of any sort. A city of ghosts, never touching, never occupying the same time, although many occupied, instead, the same space. Every citizen was perfectly out of synch with the other.
The clockwork city was written, in the Book of Truth and Lies, as the only place in space and time where its people lived in peace and order.
Yet the clockwork sun continued to wind down and the city uncoiled and so time gradually slowed, with all the people slowing down perfectly out of synch with each other. The clockwork sun was winding down, but who would wind it again?
THE NOSE
Bill West
Tobias oft told how the fairies stole his nose one night when he was sleeping off the booze under an arch of Welshman's Bridge. But I'd heard that it was syphilis that left him with that hole in his face. Plenty of coves strut around Gay Meadow sporting saddle noses, looking for the world like pugilists or bare knuckle fighters. Tobias just looked a mess. You didn't want to be near him when he sneezed.
He should go to Grindley, the blacksmith, I said, and take with him some old spoons that could be beaten fine and drawn out into a metal nose. Tobias complained that the whore son blacksmith was a Ranter and was likely to quote the Bible at him before kicking him out the door.
I felt sorry for him. Or at least I was sick of beholding that face or being in range of his purulent breath. Besides, I thought he might slip me a few coppers if I did him a good turn. I proposed to make a new nose for him out of wax if he could come by some candles.
The candle was a big expensive-looking one, much better than those tallow candles. I didn't ask where he got it from.
Not trusting Tobias to hold still, what with him looking like a fighter and all, I ordered him up to his bedchamber where I tied him to his cot with a length of rope. That done, I wound a length of linen tight under his chin to keep his head still. He wriggled and kicked when I stuck two straws where his nose should be but as I said, if he wanted to breathe through his new nose he'd have to trust me. I lit the candle and dripped wax into the hole in his face, taking no mind of his muffled oaths, stopping every once in a while to make sure the straws were keeping him breathing. Soon there was a large carbuncle of wax where his new nose would be. I took a hot knife and cut and smoothed the wax until Tobias sported such a nose as might have adorned the face of a Roman Emperor.
When I untied him and showed him his reflection in a mirror he seemed well pleased with the result, apart from the two straws sticking out of his face. These I trimmed with a paring knife. Then we were ready to go out to hit the taverns.
We had a fine evening at The Anchor with many a doxie eager to take the arm of the tall handsome man with the Roman nose.
Things went well until Tobias decided to smoke a pipe. The clay pipe he pulled from his waistcoat had a stem clipped so short it barely poked beyond the end of his new nose. He was well oiled by that time and in no mood to listen to advice.
Likely it was the heat of the pipe that loosened his nose, and the sneeze when it came didn't help. The nose shot off his face and arced across the smoky tavern towards the fire grate. A mangy Turn Spit dog was nosing around the sawdust for food scraps. Quick as a flash it jumped up, caught the nose and gulped it down.
Tobias chased the dog out the door roaring with outrage and accompanied by hoots and catcalls from all around.
I finished my ale, and his, and slipped quietly off home.
No one knows what befell Tobias. He was never seen again. But sometimes in the day's gloaming, or in the half light of a Winter sunrise when river mist cloaks the bridge, a hunched figure emerges from the bridge's shadow, picks its way along the foreshore, combs the river's edge, examines and discards small objects.
Perhaps it is the shade of Tobias, searching for a nose.
THREE TRIBUTES TO DANIIL KHARMS
Jason E. Rolfe
An Old Man
There is an old man sitting in my living room. He is sitting by the fire smoking my favorite pipe. Why is he here? What is he doing in my living room? Perhaps he is an apparition. I should say something. I should ask him to leave. No, I should demand he leave. This is my house after all. I did not invite him in, and I certainly don’t want him here. I should tell him to go away, to come back another day when I am better prepared to receive him.
No. I should not think of him at all. I s
hould ignore him altogether and hope he goes away.
An Unfinished Story
John fell asleep before finishing the book he was reading. There were only two pages left. While he slept he dreamed an ending to the story. In his dream the protagonist, whose name also happened to be John, died before he could proclaim his love for the local librarian. When John awoke he realized the dreamed ending made no sense. The story-bound John could not possibly die at the end because he appeared in the book’s already published sequel. Also, there were no libraries in the story. The librarian of his dream lived and worked in John’s home town, and until her appearance in his subconscious, John never realized he was in love with her.
That morning he forgot all about the unfinished story and headed for the library to proclaim his love for the local librarian.
Nothing Happened
Nothing happened today. I did not wake up at six o’clock, nor did I brew a pot of fresh coffee. I did not put on blue slacks and a white shirt. I did not wear my wool coat and knit cap because it did not snow today. I did not stop for another coffee on my way to Union Station. I did not miss the morning train. I did not walk ten kilometers in my finest shoes. I did not blister my feet, and I was not late for work. My boss did not call me into his office. He did not say, “That’s three times this week.” I did not get fired. I did not stop at the pub on my way home, nor did I get drunk on Vodka before noon. I did not pick a fight with the bartender. We did not come to blows and I certainly didn’t hit him over the head with a half-empty bottle of vodka. He did not die on the barroom floor and I did not flee the scene of the crime. I did not run home to hide from the police. I didn’t need to crawl back under the covers because I never crawled out of them to begin with.