Dot’s been collecting thumbs a long time, and few doors in the Answer remain barred to her. She picks one from around her wrist, warms it in her hands and presses it to the little pad: the soft eldritch click makes her grin. Through the door and she’s among the huge black sarcophagi, padding toward the center.
There’s a single pane of perfect glass there. Dot breathes mist on it and quickly traces the mystic cat’s-eye symbol, the one in the zero, the I and O.
Light suffuses the glass. Around her, the tombs of the ancients hum to life.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Jelly treads slush, keeping her head up, flippers sliding off stacks of inkjet waste. She grabs something from waist level: “Quantum Fox Gets The Pox, A Novella.” She flips through the first couple pages.
“Does it ever occur to you,” says Douglas, bobbing nearby, “that whatever we toss away is just going to float back to us?”
“Not if we keep going deeper,” says Jelly.
JJ surfaces, right on cue, blowing paper dust from his snorkel. “Got it!” he gasps, waving a battered manuscript. “I found one, guys, I found a ten-pager that’s almost worthwhile!” Then a shark eats him.
Monday, February 13, 2006
“It’s going through your head,” says her mother, like maybe she missed that.
“Brain piercing is perfectly safe,” says Alberta. “I went and got it done at a licensed clinic, okay? Not some stand at the mall. I can show you a copy of the certificate–”
“You look like a damn–a damn Stooge Brothers joke!”
“Who?”
“I am taking you back there tomorrow,” sobs her mother, “and we are getting that taken–don’t roll your eyes at me!”
But Alberta is rolling them, so far that her pupils disappear.
“Alberta?” says her mother.
Foam starts to leak from Alberta’s mouth.
Friday, February 10, 2006
You need the car, first, some kind of dark green body with purple racing stripes, and the suggestion of snakeskin. Maybe snakeskin seats. Do they make those? Regardless, it’s a big flat boat and it probably steers with those fins. Convertible.
Next you need the passenger, channeling Dave Abbruzzese with one hand, playing wind tunnel with the other.
And then the driver: wearing Ray-Bans and shake the haters, faded blue alligator polo, one hand at twelve on the wheel. Her other hand’s out the window too, back near the handle, like maybe any minute she’s going to open the door.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Caradog wakes in horror, and a grimy toilet stall, and the cold knowledge that he doesn’t know his own first name. But here–on his hand–sweaty blue pen: AK 89TH W.3
That’s the key, he knows it. Caradog lunges out into the bathroom and sees someone–there’s no time for trust! He smashes the surprised man’s head into a sink, then grabs his face and shoves him back into the stall.
Some time later, Pensieve wakes. Where is he? Who is he? He stumbles out of the stall and–there, in the mirror, blue pen backwards on his cheek–
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
JONAH
Because I was in a dark place,
and I begged to be freed.
STAR
And you were answered?
JONAH
No.
INT. SIMILAR ROOM – NIGHT
We get a flicker of JONAH in a similar room, younger and clean-shaven, slightly to the right of where he’s sitting now.
INT. STAR’S OFFICE AGAIN – NIGHT
JONAH
my way out.
STAR
Rough on the whale.
JONAH
Not as rough as remembering
this line.
“South!” says Rebecca.
“Bngah!” says South, gripping his head. “‘Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying–‘”
“Blooper reel, hour six,” she mutters.
“South!” says Sejal. “Don’t muss your hair.”
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
Saturday mornings Kit goes to the home to put half his flowers in a vase for his mother, who is still asleep. He needs the rest of the day for practice.
First he goes out to a vacant lot in the industrial park and stands in the middle, and rails at the sky. He tries to make deals. He begs kneeling.
Next he goes home for lunch, which is a casserole he made himself, and pretended to find.
Of the three town funeral homes, at least one is always occupied. He sits in back. He leaves the rest of his flowers.
“Oh man!” says Maui. “I think I got a big one here, guys! Paddle hard so I can reel it in!”
“That’s not a damn fish,” grumbles his first brother. “It’s not moving, and you used four miles of line.”
“You also,” says his second brother, “already used that trick twice,” and waves at the two new islands smoking nearby.
“I mean it this time! Biiig fish!” Maui smiles, and his smile is the moon. “Big fish! Fishy fish?”
His brothers sigh, and turn, and begin to paddle like whirlpools. Maui pulls the line taut. Together, they haul up the world.
“It was a holy thing to the Chavin,” says Mulroney, panting, “to keep the god in darkness. It was a holy act to see him, right?”
“‘Who touched me?'” Chien quotes. “‘I felt power go out of me.'”
“Right.” Mulroney grins. “Except they disappeared around 200 BC. Left some ruins, textiles and metallurgy.”
“They died out.” Chien shrugs.
“Nope,” says Mulroney. “I figure they took their toys and walked–here we go–”
Out of the pass: the valley is filled with stone beehives, like the natives never built. Chien realizes he’s gaping.
“Up here,” wheezes Mulroney, “to where the nighttime lasts.”
Thursday, February 2, 2006
Desert towns aren’t designed around good drainage: when it rains, it floods. But it’s not supposed to flood like this. Holly leaves Roger at his house and he leaves her his truck; she drives west, toward the dance.
The gym’s on low ground and the water’s already topping the first floor. The truck stalls before she can get across the lot. There are students reaching out the upstairs windows, and–no–the stucco wall is slumping–
Holly’s driving barefoot. She gathers her ruined skirt and rolls down the window. She runs out onto the water, and reaches, and then she doubts.
Wednesday, February 1, 2006