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Monthly Archives: February 2005

Schroeder

Typing on the store’s touch screen is agonizing, one. Letter. At. A time, and even when he’s done they’ve got nothing in stock. “Barenaked?” No. “Barelaked?” No.

“Are you ready to go?” His mom shuffles CDs.

“Yeah,” Schroeder says. “Okay.”

“Listen, Schroeder.” She looks around, hunted, then mutters too loudly. “Can you get me this? Off the Internet.”

He winces. “No, Mom.”

“Why not?”

The sheer explanation required weakens him. “You can’t get music anymore, okay? TV maybe. Anyway–” He squints at it. “Jesus, Mom, he’s younger than me.”

“What?” She looks more hunted. “He has an–an excellent voice!”

Symmi

Staring down at the pillow, rhythmic unblurring, Symmi blinks and feels the high start to slip away. No paranoia yet; she’s in a decidedly clinical state of mind.

Anatole’s chanting her name as he thrusts, the breathy way she doesn’t like: “Symm-eh!” She feels her viscera moving, pushing up against each other. Swing and knock. They’re a set of clacking silver balls hung from the frame of her ribs, back and forth like the ones on the desk of her high school counselor, damn, what was his name?

“Newton?” she murmurs. “Newlin!”

“Sih!” gasps Anatole, “what?” too late to pull out.

The Doctor

All through the hood, the children are whispering: tonight. Tonight is the night!

A pair of dubs, a bag of rubbers, maybe a fifth of Tanqueray–the children will take their special gifts and leave them in the secret spot under the porch. They’ll try not to sleep, and fail; and in the night, the Chronic Fairy will arrive–

And when the children wake and turn their pillows, oh! Dime bags and nickel bags! Spliffs and bricks!

“Thank you, Chronic Fairy!” they’ll shriek in delight.

And the Doctor will smile, and flutter his wings, and whizz away home to the Aftermath.

Holly

Each of the layered bronze discs has a circle cut out of its lower quadrant, and as they rotate past each other–once every hour–they create an eclipse in miniature. Beneath the bronze, Rowan’s watch is black, hinting at orange. The band is red faux crocodile.

Holly can’t take her eyes off it. There’s something obscene about the fact that it is still ticking.

She picked wildflowers from the park, after hopping the fence, but now she wishes she hadn’t. They look stupid next to the big proper bouquets: roses, chrysanthema and stargazer lilies. They’re all white. Holly’s are yellow.

Pensieve

“You happy now?” gasps India, and hacks blood. She’s grinning. “Nobody wins.” Caradog’s lolled back in the chair, face white.

“Shut up!” he says. He’s tearing pictures off the walls, yanking back the bolster. “Where the fuck is it!”

“What?” India squints. “Jesus, you’re losing it.”

“The damn reset!” he shouts. “It has to be here! It has to bNNEET”

“–friends, okay?” India spreads her hands. “Here for business. Pat me down if you want.”

“Forget it,” grunts Caradog. “Nobody’s going to do anything stupid. Right, Pensieve?”

Pensieve stares at her, pulse racing. Remember. There’s something he’s supposed to remember.

Irving

The flames of candles are fragile, so Irving keeps barbecue lighters all over the house. This one gets him from his bedroom to the stove. At least the gas hasn’t been turned off. Yet.

Nobody knows how to make coffee in a pot anymore. Even those who grind their own beans (by pushing a button; he turns a crank) use automatic drips and disposable filters. Irving’s heard the latest thing is coffee in pods. Pods! He associates the word with science fiction and peas.

Irving brews in cast iron, drip and whistle, through filters he washes and hangs up to dry.

Chili John

Chili John gets the half-nod from the bartender and follows his thumb: there, obscured by palmetto. Yes. He drops a Sacajawea in a puddle of beer and tries on his most casual mosey.

He stops at the corner table, hooks his thumbs in his belt. “They say you’re the one.”

The man pulls at his Miller Lite.

“Are they right?” Chili John brushes one holster. “About that?”

Silence.

“They say,” he clears his throat, “they say you’re the man knows Greg Fu.”

The man looks up at last, and in his eyes is the look of a raw and ancient doom.

The Girl in the House

She’s writing every name she knows with her finger on the dirt floor of eight South twelve Down. She looks up to see a kitten.

It stumbles–adorably–and tests the floor with one paw. She laughs and waves at it; it doesn’t react.

She picks it up. Its heart pounds. Its nametag says “Millicent.”

The girl becomes aware that Cosette is her name, properly. That Millicent, the only other living thing she’s seen, is the first thing she hasn’t needed to name. That someone else exists: someone who would replace a kitten’s eyes with marbles, to keep it stumbling forever.

Rob

“Thought you were supposed to use dirt from a grave,” says Rob, a bit hopelessly.

“You see any graveyards around here?” snaps Darlene.

“Yeah, behind the church at 28th and Madison–”

“Shut up,” she says. “Graveyard dirt. Goofer dust. Huh. You might get lucky and find one who got buried and wasn’t dead yet, but most of the time that’s stale power. Now this…” She scoops another fistful of sand into the baggie. “This is a thousand people, all sticking their deaths into the same soil. See?”

Rob notices a Kool butt in the bag, all magenta on one end.

Ivy

“Listen, Darren?” says Ivy. “I just went and checked the globe, okay? And I looked it up on the Internet to make sure. If you dig straight down, like all the way, you’re not going to come out in China. Not even in Australia. For most of the United States, the only thing that’s on exactly the other side is the Indian Ocean, and we’re right in the middle, okay? So put the shovel down and let’s get you out. I’ll get a rope, okay? Darren?”

Ivy pauses, and kicks a clod of earth down into the darkness.

“Hello?” she calls.

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