Unshod Quills

On the theme of Enough Rope

THE FREED PRISONER VERSUS HIS HOROSCOPE

The prisoner back in society, just like that. One day he’s in, and the next day, he’s reading the newspaper like none of it ever happened, only it did.

He’s never not still surprised by the light. He gets swallowed up a lot now, in his new life. Just like when he reads the newspaper and has to contemplate certain things like freedom. And what it means.

Most of the time, it doesn’t mean that much to him.

The first time he went for a walk, he wasn’t sure where exactly he was going. Just headed off in a direction, and that was hard to stomach because he found himself looking for how he was confined. What walls were out there waiting for him? What was this thing they told him about being free? He kept walking.

And then he found them. It hadn’t taken more than a few hours, when he came upon a bank of chain-link fences, stretching in both directions to either side, into the darkness somewhere small. To places that he could now see were equally hopeless, places he wouldn’t ever bother traveling to. What would be the point?

A dog saunters up from somewhere behind him, smells his hand as if he’s looking for a pat on the head. The prisoner kicks him instead, has to take this out on someone or something. As soon as it’s done he feels guilty, figures it’s just the institution still in him somewhere. He always assumed the guilt would just be his to carry, but it surprised him every time just the same. Now was another one of those times.

So he kneels down to call the dog over from wherever he went, maybe just a few feet away. It takes a minute but eventually he does. No collar. What would be the point? They’re both in a cage. In fact, once his eyes adjusted to the oncoming darkness around them, he realized it was several rows of cages, hedging them in like some kind of concentric maze – more than enough of them to convince anyone in their right mind that trying to escape was futile. What had he been looking for when he went on this walk anyway? The prison psych doctor would have told him he was looking for exactly what he had found.

But that was a bunch of bullshit, and he knew it. Who the hell would be looking for captivity again after what he’d just been in?

Maybe everything of consequence had been washed down the single drain in the center of that cell back there in his past. Maybe it had all disappeared, and him with it.

Right down the drain.

And then everything around him was quiet again, back in the present. This was one of those moments his prison counselor had told him about. More like a warning, actually, now that he was in it, alone.

The dog had trotted off in the direction he came, and the prisoner looked around him for something, for a light or a house or someone who could tell him where the hell he’d been put once they let him out of prison.

About a mile east of where he ended up finding the fence, and another quarter-mile inside of it, he comes upon a house with a soft blue light on, the kind that a television would make. At least he had found some kind of civilization. He wondered if someone else in his position would be scared of what he was about to do. He wondered where his fear had gone to, because he couldn’t feel any of it anymore, and maybe this made him less than human. Maybe this is why they had put him right back in a cage.

A man answers the door. “Watchin’ t.v., what the fuck you want, mister? Me an’ my buddy here are watchin’ some t.v. and then there’s a knock at the fuckin’ door, and guess who it is?” he says, hardly realizing what he’s doing. Or maybe he’s another one without any fear.

None of this registers on the prisoner’s face. He can see something familiar off behind the man on top of a table in what looks like a kitchen. “Gimme’ the newspaper,” he says to the man. “I want it,” he says, not blinking at all.

“Get this, Earl. This fuckin’ guy here wants the newspaper,” he says, leaning over to grab the papers with his left hand while keeping his right one on the door knob the whole time. “Can you believe it?”

“Thanks. I need to read my horoscope. That’s all. G’nite,” the prisoner says to him, turning to walk farther down the street. He hears the door close somewhere behind him, and opens the paper underneath a street lamp about a block away. Flipping to the back, he finds it. The horoscope. His horoscope

Author Biography

Matty Byloos’s first collection of short stories, Don’t Smell the Floss, was published in 2009 by Write Bloody Books. His work has appeared in Everyday Genius, Matchbook, Bomb, Dark Sky Magazine, among others. With Carrie Seitzinger, he runs Smalldoggies Magazine & Press. He is currently working on his first novel.

Learn more about him at his personal blog: www.mattybyloos.com

Or at the Smalldoggies Magazine site: www.smalldoggiesmagazine.com

two short stories on the theme of love

Test Pattern

Sarah’s white dressing gown is hanging on the nails driven into the window sash. She likes to hang it over the window by the TV at night, since there is no curtain. This way she can turn on the television and watch in peace without the intrusion of headlights or moonlight or any other light, no noise of anything moving or breathing, just her and the soft blinkering picture, the gentle hum of the various machines in her home. She mentally takes inventory, the things that hum and make noise in this room, all of them powered on for some reason, as if it’s the noise which comforts: Sharp 50 inch screen TV, which had taken three men to get it into place; Sony DVD player; Panasonic VHS player; Sony Playstation, Nintendo Gamecube; a Hewlett Packard stack with 160 gigs of memory, a gig of RAM, and a flat-screen monitor currently displaying moving pictures of fish, though the picture changes every time her mailer checks the mail, usually every two minutes; two digital clocks, one of them a clock radio that Corey uses when he doesn’t feel like coming in the room to sleep with her, so he can wake up to Howard Stern. He used to wake up to the feel of her against him. The remote feels warm in her hand from where it’s been lodged against her thigh. She’s gone through the channels and not found anything. She’s paged through the on-demand screens full of soft-core porn and other films and found nothing. Corey’s CDs are boxed in alphabetically ordered milk crates against the wall, but there’s nothing there to listen to. She remembers movies she seen that she liked, the one about the falling building with Steve McQueen, Towering Inferno, that’s it. She remembers how cute OJ was in that movie as some guy named Harry Jernigan, as if any black man has ever had that name. There was another one, a really freaky one, where the TV came alive, turned into a lurid pair of lips and talked someone into it, talked the man into getting naked, talked him into delivering himself naked into her cathode embrace, where he was promptly eaten or something. This reminds her of the cute little blonde girl from Poltergeist, which somehow brings her to Showgirls, row upon row of bare-boobed dancers being tweaked and ogled by some men who purportedly employed them, how Corey had come out with her afterward shaking his long head of hair, how they’d made love in the car after laughing at the silliness, all that bare flesh and awkward pool-fucking exciting the loins in spite of its awful putrid badness and gratuitous everything. She remembers watching some hard stuff with Corey, how his eyes had been following the actor performing the blowjob, how he’d asked her to get a boob job after. She knew it was wrong, but she liked the way these women looked, and she knew he did, so why not, as it wasn’t hurting anyone. She sits in her bra and panties, thinks of stripping down the rest of the way for Corey before he opens the door. The thought excites her, and she reaches behind her back and unclasps the hooks, and the TV goes out with a pop and the house is dark. Sarah curses, walks over to the wall and wiggles the cable connection. It seems slightly loose so she turns it a few times, her hard breasts pushed against the warm screen of the TV and that TV-eater-of-people movie comes to mind again and she moves back, fumbles for the remote on the sofa, raps it against her hands, presses first the TV button then the cable, but it simply won’t turn on. Time passes. She can’t tell how much, as she doesn’t own a watch and the sim-card in her cell-phone has gone hay-wire. Corey’s working late tonight, Sarah guesses. If she could just see a clock and know what time it is, she could guess if he was driving past the multiplex or down the street, past the video store and the KFC.  The wind stirs her dressing gown and for a moment it looks just like a person hanging there in the air, like a ghost maybe, from the Scooby-Doo movie. She moves the dressing gown aside and looks out at the completely dark, dead street. For once there are no oncoming cars. The Tom Cruise film War of the Worlds will be out soon. She wonders what’s happened. If she reaches heaven someday she wonders if she’ll realize she’s there.

_______

The Feel of My Heart

The way Misty looks is like a rumor. How they begin as one thing and end up as another. We’re all mixed up. Couples fucking each other and no one’s supposed to know. She is dealing cards three at a time, then two, for euchre. Rick and Sandy, my partner for this game, are chasing their whisky with each other’s spit. I see something dart across the kitchen floor and Rick sees it too. He grabs his .22 and shoots it and Misty drops the last set of cards, a bead of blood showing on her outer arm. She slaps at it like a fly bite.

“Fuckhead.” she says. “You shot me.” She dabs at the blood with a bar napkin. “A little.”The rat is twitching in the middle of the floor, leaving a smear as it crawls for a hole.

“But I got the rat,” Rick says, and blows across the pistol barrel like a gunslinger, and Sandy kisses the side of his neck and tells him what a nice shot he is.

“Asshole.” I say it low, so he can’t hear me. Misty shakes her head at me quick-like.

“Something you want to say, Daniel?” Rick levels the .22 at my face, a warm black eye swimming in front of me. I shake my head and feel my guts go loose.

“Clubs are trump,” Misty says. “Yours to make.” She’s holding the napkin to her arm again. Her cards are down. Sandy looks at Rick before she says no.

“Clubs it is. I’ll go alone,” Rick says, and it’s my lead. I think of the sawed-off baseball bat under the front seat of my Crown Vic. I toss out the ace of spades. Misty’s not even paying attention; she’s hitting the pipe. I look around the table, it’s all slow motion now. I can see Rick’s fingers moving slightly, tapping the table, and there’s Misty large in my vision, her head tossed back, the tendons in her neck working.

Later that night I’ll be biting her, just a little, when Rick will knock the door down and demand I leave. It will end badly. Misty will get shot at again. There will be a struggle, and I’ll wake up with her washing my face of brain and gore from Rick.

Right now, though, it’s just the sound of my own breathing and Rick in the doorway, that tiny pistol waving in our faces, and Misty’s giggle, a current broken, a connection missed, the feel of my heart hard in my throat.

Author Biography

Rusty Barnes lives and writes in Revere MA. He co-founded Night Train  and oversees Fried Chicken and Coffee, a blogazine of rural and Appalachian interests. His latest collection of fiction is called Mostly Redneck. A recent collection of his poetry, Broke, can be found  here. 

Cake
on childhood

The little boy and I were at his house. It was just after his birthday party (it was just him and me) and we were standing on the picnic table because we were about to stomp around on his cake because we thought it would be fun. His mama came out screaming, “What’re you two doin’?

We jumped down off that picnic table and he ran one way and I ran the other.

She had a stick in her hand and she was swinging it. It was a small branch, she called it a switch and I could see why cuz when she waved it, I heard it say, “Switch, switch.”

She was screaming and saying things I couldn’t understand. That little boy and I ran and ran and ran.

Then my mama came over the fence. I had never in my short life seen her do anything like that. My mama was big with comfy arms for resting your head on and she grunted whenever she stood, but she was over that fence.

She went at that little boy’s mama like my dog went after a squirrel.

That boy’s mama went down and limp like that squirrel. That fast. And she was like a sock on the ground.

My mama sat down on the bench. She sat and looked at the moon over the trees – a sliver in the midday sky. She sat like that breathing and breathing, like me when I play real hard, until she was normal again.

She talked quiet and calm the way she can when she wants to and the little boy and I went to her. I sat on her lap and the boy leaned on her leg with his head against that comfy arm.

She went to touching that little boy’s bruises and cuts. He had bruises everywhere. I had never once touched those bruises.

She talked slow like a river of honey to that little boy, “I used to talk to your mama. I thought we were the same about children, raising them up right with manners. With discipline.”

The little boy backed away from her then. Fear made his shoulders rise and his face go hard and sad.

Mama looked at him like she was the angel who picks people up when they die and takes them to heaven – sad for them cuz living is good.

She said, “But I didn’t mean that the way she did.”

“She means spankins’,” the boy said.

The boy and my mama kept looking at each other with a silence of understanding like birds and small things when they all know their places.

“I didn’t know your mama had the devil whispering in her ear to put you in your place – he puts people in hell and that’s what your demon mama did.”

That little boy and I said, “Puuaa,” with our breath and then mama remembered to say, “God rest her soul.”

She picked me up off her lap and knelt down at the boy’s feet and I don’t know how, but it looked like she was gonna pray to him.

“Will she hurt me when she wakes up?”

“She’ll never wake up again,” mama said with her eyebrows thick and fallen down tree branchy.

That little boy smiled. He whooped and hollered like a little boy again.

My mama grunted and stood. “Now, it’s time for you two to go inside for awhile.”

She turned to the little boy and said, “I want you to call your daddy.”

The daddy came home and the little boy and I watched while he dug a big hole.

I never did see that little boy again.

Somebody else moved into the house.

The boy grew up, as we all did. He sent my mama letters. Photos. No return address.

“We don’t want any connections, you know.” That’s what mama said about that.

On his birthday, every year till I was grown, my mama made a big cake and we danced in it in our bare feet.

______

Writer’s Block and The Imaginary Phone Call
on the theme of Love

I say, “I’m writing a book about you and mom and I.”

“Uh-huh.”

My brother isn’t one to talk to fill the air. Well, yea, he is, what’m I saying. He totally is.

So he fills the air with his words. His rage. His…well, I’ll let him tell you.

Not that it matters, but you’re almost always wrong. And you went to college and got your head messed with – liberalized. You haven’t ever been to war so you don’t know anything about life and death. You’ve never pulled the trigger. You’ve killed, but abortion’s not the same and you know it. The wife already hates you and if you say anything bad about her, we’ll sue you. And I’d be careful cuz some of her relatives are mean as the day is long (and I mean that in a good way) and they’ll find you. Or your daughter. You should think of Emma. What’s she gonna think of what you have to say about yourself. You can’t tell her about abortion cuz then she’ll have one. You can’t tell her about your boyfriend in high school cuz then she’ll have sex. And my kids. What’ll happen to them if people find out they’re related to you – could cost them. We don’t live in a place where it’s ok to talk like you do, telling people shameful things and being ashamed of your ancestors and telling history wrong. We just can’t say things like that. And you know about our cousin, but you don’t know how he’s hurt our uncle – how he went to Vietnam and then had to raise a gay son – do you know what that was like. No, of course you don’t and you don’t spank. Your kid’s gonna grow up cussing and acting like she can do anything she wants and how’s that gonna work out for her. You know she’s a girl, right? And how’s your husband John gonna feel when he knows what you did and what you were like and he’s gonna feel so cheated.

And you never had a son either while we’re talking.

You don’t have anything to write about anyway. I don’t know why anyone should listen to you.

If you write anything about me, I will sue you.

Yea, so…

Give Emma my love. Tell John hello.

Author Biography

Jenny Forrester was the 2011 winner of the Richard Hugo House New Works Competition contest and the runner up in Indiana Review’s 1/2K prize. Find out more about her writing at Trailer Trash Writing on Facebook.

on the theme of David Bowie

Labyrinth

Author Biography

Kevin Sampsell is the publisher of the micropress, Future Tense Books, and author and editor of several books of fiction and nonfiction. His latest book is A Common Pornography (Harper Perennial). He lives in Portland, Oregon.

On the theme of David Bowie

Editor’s note: I hate to pick favorites, but I’m doing it now. Jenny Hayes, this is a masterpiece. -DRG

Dear Rosie AKA Ro-Ho-Zee AKA Rosarita Refried Beans

October 12, 1981

Dear Rosie AKA Ro-Ho-Zee AKA Rosarita Refried Beans,

HI! Sorry your new school is so bunk. You aren’t missing much here,
everything is pretty much the same except that Erica got a perm and so
did Leslie Stang. I have Ms. Stanford for History AGAIN!!! I thought I
left her ugly face behind in 7th grade but I guess she teaches 8th
too. My English teacher seems pretty cool. Everything else is just
blah.

Hold on I am going to put on a record, wait isn’t it funny that I just
wrote “hold on” when you haven’t even gotten this letter yet? DUMB! I
bought “CHANGESONEBOWIE” at Pellucidar and it’s hella raw. I am going
to write you while the songs are playing and that way it will be like
we are listening together!

SPACE ODDITY – Weird, I always thought this song was called “Ground
Control To Major Tom” or something like that. I don’t think he even
says “Space Oddity” in the whole song. Do you remember at Jason’s
brother’s party last year how we were all lying on the ground outside
looking up at the stars and Miles said he saw a UFO? I think he was a
big fat liar. Or maybe he was HIGH!

JOHN, I’M ONLY DANCING – That reminds me of the other day when five or
six girls started busting a move at lunch, I don’t know them but the
cafeteria ladies tried to grab them so they started to run, and one of
them tripped over something and knocked Sarah’s tray of food all over
the floor. Oh Lordy!  I thought she was going to cry but she didn’t.
We all shared our lunch with her, I gave her an apple and Alexis gave
her half of a sandwich. Oops see that smear? I just smooshed an ant.
Sorry, ant.

CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES! “Turn and face the strange”, it seems like
everywhere I go that is what happens, something or someone strange.
But sometimes I like things that are strange! Did I tell you that Rain
got together with this guy named Marcus who is 17 or 18 and a punk. He
doesn’t go to Berkeley High or anywhere but I don’t know if he
graduated already or just dropped out. We went and rode around with
him and a couple of his friends in a van and they got us stoned and we
threw empty slurpee cups at some college students, it was hell of
funny! Then we drove past Sarah and yelled “HEY BABY” and she didn’t
know it was us! Then we went to some girl’s house and there was this
guy there who was FINE! Rain said she wished Marcus wasn’t there
because she wanted to jump on him. I talked to him a little, but
nothing really. Later we were telling Alexis and her older sister was
there and it turns out she knows all those people and she knew who the
really fine guy was. She said his name is Chris and HE HANDCUFFS HIS
GIRLFRIENDS!!!!!!

ZIGGY STARDUST – This song is soooooooo goooooood. One time Rain drew
a lightning bolt over her eye trying to make it like Ziggy Stardust
but it looked kind of weird, and it started to smear and then Alexis
told her it looked like a black eye and Rain said maybe it WAS. But it
was just eyeliner, but sometimes she can be way too dramatic.

SUFFRAGETTE CITY. Is that a real city? I have no idea what this song
is about. Except for WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA’AM! I like the piano part,
I’m gonna tell Sarah she should learn how to play it. She takes piano
lessons and she’s really good. Right now she is learning Stairway to
Heaven!

JEAN GENIE. If my name was Jean I would call myself that. Wait, do the
lyrics say good or bad things? I guess I’d have to listen closer. All
the nicknames for my name are dumb. I can’t think of anything to write
so here is a description of what I am wearing: black pegged pants,
light blue “Go Climb A Rock” t-shirt, purple sweat shirt, music note
pin, and black velvet china flats. Exciting huh? Plus I have blue nail
polish on my nails but it’s hell of chipping!

OOPS, I forgot this record player is dumb and it doesn’t stop when the
side is over, it’s spinning around and around with the needle down
going BUP … BUP … BUP … Maybe I’ll just sit and listen to that
for a while. What if it’s like one of those mantra things and if you
chant it over and over it opens your mind and you enter a new
dimension? Like the hare krishnas and the stuff they say, I don’t even
know! BUP… Maybe if I listen for long enough I’ll be in touch with
the consciousness of all beings. Maybe I will become one with that ant
that I smashed on this sheet of paper and then I will be sad. I am
going to close my eyes and see how long I can just listen…

Fuck that! I picked up the needle (it made a scratch, oops) and turned
the record over. Now it’s DIAMOND DOGS! They call them the diamond
dogs, wait WHO do they call that? Some dogs? Maybe next time I see
some dogs I’ll just go, “hello Diamond Dogs!” haha I am so weird!!!

REBEL REBEL, Rain likes this one the best, every time it comes on she
closes her eyes and shakes her head like a big weirdo, but I think
it’s pretty good too. The other day she had cloves and we smoked some
at lunch over by the hole in the fence. Have you ever tried them? I
don’t really like cigarettes but I love cloves, they make your mouth
all tingly and sweet tasting. She told me about this store where you
can buy them and they don’t even care if you have a note or anything.
I want to get some next time I have some money!

YOUNG AMERICANS. This is probably my least favorite, it’s okay but it
sounds like something that would be in a play that my parents would
drag me to and it would be some man going off about his lost youth or
something. And then he would BREAK DOWN AND CRYYYYYYYY…. My parents
had their friends over for dinner last night and they are so weird,
the lady has really long hair like down to her butt but it is going
gray, and she wore this long skirt with bells on it! (that was kind of
cool actually) The man is so funny looking, I wish I could draw better
so I could just show you. He has these weird big teeth and dark framed
glasses and this laugh that is like “HUH! HUH! HUH!” it was driving me
crazy!

FAME …wouldn’t it be neat if someday we got famous? Like if we were
all famous together, you and me and Sarah and Rain and Alexis. I know
you think they don’t really like you but they just don’t  know you
that well. It’s kind of weird how I started hanging out with all of
them after you and me sort of stopped acting like friends (even though
we still were!) at the end of last school year. I always figured
sooner or later you and me would go back to how things were before,
and then we’d all be friends together, but then you moved.

GOLDEN YEARS. Golden years, mwop mwop mwop … I was going around
singing that part in science the other day, just walking up to people
going “mwop mwop mwop”, everyone probably thought I was a super freak.
Have you heard that song SUPER FREAK??? It’s hexa coo! One time me and
Alexis and Rain were singing it on the 51 and some lady was looking at
us like “How dare you sing on the bus!” But then this one guy went
“Gimme five!” when he stood up to ring the bell for his stop. We all
slapped his hand and then he said something to Rain and none of us
heard what it was but it seemed kind of perverted so I was glad he got
off the bus.

Well, it’s over. Ta-Da! (I already took the needle off this time don’t
worry) Well write me back soon or else I will beat-a your-a ass-a!

Love,

Alison AKA Ally-Wally AKA Alisonwonderland

P.S. WRITE BACK!

P. P.S. Another ant just walked on this piece of paper, but I let it live.

P. P. P.S. I saw Mr. Walter in the hall last week and he said to tell
you he MISSES YOUR BUTT!!!!!!!!!

Author Biography

Jenny Hayes grew up in Berkeley, California and now lives in Seattle.
Her work has appeared in Penduline Press, Ampersand Journal, and
Significant Objects, and she co-authors the blog Yard Sale Bloodbath..
http://www.jennyhayes.com

On the themes of David Bowie, Joan of Arc, and Enough Rope

Hammer Down
For Samantha Callahan
(ENOUGH ROPE)

You’re an eight-ball. Every hand you see
is crooked, that of old men who shake whiskey sours
in harbor bars. Forget that sludge of a sigh
resting heavy in your gut. Autumn is always here,
always bringing you back to Seventeenth Street: church
every day with the south-end Irish,
a paisley shawl wrapped tightly ‘round your waist.

This city is no bigger than when the men were scarce and broken,
when all the boys were merely boys. When the tide takes it,
its nervous waltz will keep us sleepless. Don’t rest. Hurry home.
Name your truth and touch me.

___

This Is What Happens When You’re Single Too Long and a Pretty Girl Named Joan Smiles At You
(JOAN OF ARC)

I thought for too long about the arc of our bodies.
Not when we are older, but when we were younger,
before we knew each other: your drink stays full all night
and you hold it like a burden. You lean forward.
I’m a janitor three states over. I tug at my posture
like a half-truth. We’re seventeen. We’re always seventeen.

___

Let’s Spend the Night Together
(David Bowie)

Popular rumor states that Angela Bowie found her then-husband naked in bed with (also naked) Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger sometime in the early 70s. Upon Angela revealing this on an episode of The Joan Rivers Show in 1990, the aftermath of denial showed both men handling damage control in the spirit of their rock and roll personas: the cocksure Jagger came right out and said that Angela was full of shit and Bowie came right out and said nothing, as his lawyer released a statement saying that there was never a gay relationship between the two. It makes sense that Mick, who has based an entire career around singing like a man and dancing like a woman, would do one thing and say another. And of course David, who has based an entire career around androgyny and displacement, would just let people think whatever the hell they wanted.

It’s called being a rockstar. The whole point being that you do whatever it is that you want with no consideration for the outcome, which is why you can take a class on the British Invasion and think critically about lyrical allusions to personal and political turmoil, but at the end of the day you’re either the sort of person who’s going to throw a hotel television into a pool or you’re not. To this end, it would make perfect sense for Mick and David to come right out and say, “Yep, we totally had sex with each other. What of it?” Because there was no such public acknowledgement of the tryst, are we right to assume that the tryst is a fabrication and that both men led totally hetero lives?

Perhaps. In moving beyond base-level fascination, salacious celebrity sex stories are no more interesting than their blue collar counterparts. Hip Hop Man fucks Business Mogul’s Inexplicably Famous Daughter is, essentially, the same thing as Bowling Alley Manager Man fucks Avon Saleswoman. The true banalities of sex are obvious when the act is both the means and the end. It’s like watching pornography or engaging in last call hook ups or almost all of sex that Mick and David had throughout their careers. For them to have been outed in the 70s, at the height of their respective popularity, would have only helped to propel the mythos they were building. It would have just one more hole for Mick’s “fuck anything” attitude and as for David, it would have added another layer to his queerness-by-way-of-fucking-supermodels. So it’s entirely possible that the issue wasn’t one of sex.

Or sexuality, for that matter. When (then former) Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford came out of the closet in 1998, he made note of how having to hide his homosexuality caused him to go through severe bouts of loneliness and depression. Though I don’t doubt that Mick and David dealt with similar demons, nothing they’ve ever done has given the impression that it’s because they were hiding their sexual preference from the world at large. If anything, they fell into depressive states due to their substance abuse, as opposed to Halford falling into substance abuse to help deal with his depression.

It seems to make the most sense, then, that Mick and David are two men who loved not other men, but one another, in ways that stretched beyond gender. A true “forbidden love” usually tends to be more of the former and less of the latter, but Bowie and Jagger seemed much more like Romeo and Juliet than, say, a teenage version of yourself in dire need of dating someone ten years older who likes to punch you in the meat of your arms while you fuck, and only survives because the street value of cocaine doesn’t fluctuate as wildly as the job market. (Call your parents and apologize. They were probably right about some stuff.)

I like to believe that Bowie and Jagger had sex at least once. I like to think that they shared a unique, honest love that, both in spite and because of their importance to rock and roll, they felt they could never publicly express. It humanizes the larger than life aspects of their characters in ways that only the effects of simple, compounded ache can do.

Putting aside musical integrity and topical aesthetics, the video for Mick and David’s version of “Dancing In the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas is amongst the most ambiguously gay entities of the 1980s, the same era that spawned the volleyball scene in Top Gun and the ’87 Oakland A’s. Above all, it is the Rosetta Stone to their dynamic, and while the undertones range from playful to overt, there is no slack at all in the tension between Mick and David, as if their hearts and cocks are tethered by the tightest of guitar strings. In it, we find two men who allegedly shared at least one evening of passion a decade prior. After the fires of both their careers and feelings have settled a bit, they get together and experience somewhat of a rekindling, somewhat of an exposure to the differences between what they were to one another and what they currently are.

:00-40 (Warehouse)
Mick is dancing by himself. He calls out, asking if everyone in the world is “ready for a brand new beat.” He sings “Summer’s here, the time is right,” and then David shows up in frame on an elevated surface to the right of Mick.

:41-:47 (Warehouse)
The camera does a momentary close-up of David smiling in a somewhat maniacal toward Mick. Overwhelmed to a point of bursting, David jumps down in the direction of Mick. When the camera cuts back to Mick, David walks into the shot coolly and stands next to him without acknowledging or being acknowledged.

:48-:50 (Warehouse)
David dips down and bounces back up quickly, brushing his head against the side of Mick’s head. Mick takes a second to react and then darts his eyes over to David as if worried about the obviousness of intentions better left secret. David doesn’t notice.

1:06-1:13 (Street)
The men face each other and sing “It doesn’t matter what you wear.” David’s head remains forward, but his eyes go to Mick’s mouth. Mick looks straight forward at David’s face. Mick fiddles with the lapel on David’s jacket. The men put their foreheads together and sing, loudly, convincingly, “As long as you are there.”

1:14-1:22 (Street)
Immediately after finishing the previous line, the men turn away from each other to sing “Every guy, grab a girl.” They then face each other at close range once again to sing, “Everywhere, around the world, we’ll be dancin’.” The scene freezes briefly before cutting away. Mick’s lips are puckered. David is moving toward them, eyes closed.

1:36-1:42 (Street)
The camera revolves around Bowie in the foreground and Mick in the background as David takes the lead vocal. Mick fixes his hair with one hand while looking at David. Mick’s gaze is one of inventory and concentration. He quickly licks his lips as he hops back in front of David so the two of them can sing the refrain together.

2:18-2:19 (Warehouse)
This time, it’s Mick who rubs his head lightly against the side of David’s. David looks annoyed. Mick doesn’t notice.

2:45-2:58 (Street)
The camera slows down and does a tight shot of the men’s asses. They’re side-by-side and they shake their hips in total synchronicity to the left, the right, and back to the left quickly before the camera freezes and fades to white. In the last second of the video, the screen fades to the traditional black.

Five years after that, after they had learned to live at peace with what they shared, it’s brought up as a cheap matter of publicity. I’d deny it, too. And then I’d grab a girl and dance in the goddamn street.

___

Line
(David Bowie)

A pity-seeking friend of mine who was prone to announcing his heart pains at dinner and then dramatically taking nitroglycerin pills started up with the old act, to which I said, “If you have chest pains alone in the woods, is it still a heart attack?” It was the last time I was funny, about twenty-five years ago.

I ask Vince about comedy the way kids ask their parents how clouds work and he responds back like cough syrup dripping down the side of the bottle. I’ve been his tour manager for the past few decades. He keeps me around because I’m not funny, because I don’t romanticize comedy the way other people do. When I said my heart attack line at dinner that one time, he laughed like everyone else and then said, “One more like that and you’re fired.”

The newest tour is probably his last big one, so I’ve made it the biggest one: half a year straight, 140 shows. Vince is in his late-50s and he’ll do more shows this year than an MLB pitcher will play games. I’ve set it up so he’ll be taking a young comedian out with him, and when I pick them both up at the airport, Vince and I wait for twenty minutes while Lee signs autographs. Vince watches him through the window and I go, “He’s on that new show, Mumford’s Place. The reviews aren’t great, but the ratings are pretty outstanding for the timeslot.”

Vince moves his mouth off to the side of his face and thinks for a moment before saying, with no malice, “He’s at the part of his teens where girls think he gets ten seconds of TV time for every inch of his dick.”

“He’s twenty-three,” I say.

“Yeah,” Vince says. “No shit.”

Lee bombs that first night, which is the opposite of killing, which is what a comedian wants to do. “It’s like the wilderness,” Vince tells me the next morning over breakfast at the hotel, talking about Lee’s set from the night prior. “You kill the audience or they kill you. And if you don’t do either, you probably aren’t worth a goddamn.”

I look over and see Lee through the window, lying down on a bench outside. The sun is already out and Lee is on his back, arms hanging off to his sides so the tips of his fingers touch the ground. We go to see if he’s all right. “I don’t think I did so hot last night, guys,” he says.

“It’ll get easier when everyone cares except you and not the other way around,” Vince says, tossing a bagel on his chest. “Now eat your Jew pills and go take a shower.”

Later on, right as Lee walks onto stage, Vince turns to me as we watch from the wings. “He has the sort of eyes that always look like someone just got done politely attacking them with a squeegee.” The crowd laughs, and for a second, I think it’s for Vince.

* * *

We’re a couple weeks into the tour and a good chunk of the crowd is leaving after Lee finishes. They walk out in groups of two or three at a time and talk loudly about needing to use the bathroom or wanting some Ju-Ju Fruits, some sort of guilty alibi they feel they need to have for thinking that Lee’s schtick from Mumford’s Place that’s gone into his act is, somehow, unfollowable.

Vince isn’t sour, but it’s sort of nudged him toward long exposition about true, how there’s no such thing as the new truth, there’s only the new thing that is or isn’t true.

“The only thing left in comedy is honesty,” he says from the stage. “And it’s all being used up on some really convincing lies.”

We’re going to the car after a show and some guy casually walks up to Lee and hits him across the nose with a right hook. I talked to the cops while Vince sat with Lee in the ER. “I can see it in the papers, Lee,” he said. “HIT COMEDIAN IS HIT COMEDIAN.” That’s how Vince salts wounds, by being the worst possible variation of the thing he already is.

Sure enough, the news can’t leave it alone. Any tickets left for any of the shows sell. Then Lee’s act goes completely down the shitter. It becomes like watching one of those Time-Life commercials for Best Of compilations, little snippets of things remembered, the Reader’s Digest version of comedy with an odd shine-job from Lee’s newfound celebrity. Vince said it was like watching an open mic at a surgeon’s office. “They’ll laugh at anything, just leave their brain alone.”

Getting back to the hotel was an ordeal now, with everyone wanting autographs from Lee. “What do I do?” he asked me. “They wait for me in the hallway.”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about hallways.”

Vince smirked and told me I was fired. We walked outside and Lee had his Sharpie out, running through the three letters of his name so fast that it looked like a series of number twos eating itself.

* * *

Lee is on the cover of US Weekly. Not the whole thing, just in a little box in the corner. But still.

Apparently, he’s one of the most eligible bachelors alive. The little blurb about him inside says that he’s a breath of fresh air into the stuffiness that comedy has become. He’s quoted as saying, “People think that comedy is just someone getting on stage and being funny. It takes a lot of unhappiness to get satisfaction through comedy.”

How do you feel bad for someone who hates the attention they tried really hard to get? It becomes especially difficult to do when he misses his next show to go trip on acid with some hippy looking woman, long Crystal Gayle hair down to the tops of her thighs, even the fog of her breath coming out in earth tones. The tour is half over and Lee looks like he has to be microwaved every morning. There’s been talk around the crew of Lee’s manager wanting to pull off the tour early and book some stadiums for Lee to do solo.

There’s an entourage all the time now. Publicists and other folks who, as far as I can tell, aren’t doing much. Vince calls to him one night when he’s walking out with his new friends and says, “When was the last time you were alone?” Before Lee can answer, Vince asks him, “Are you all right with that?” And again, Vince gets up and goes before Lee can say a thing.

* * *

There are five dates left on the tour. I’m starting to think that Vince could do it forever. It’s clear that he’s built his life around performing comedy on the road. I bring it up to him and he says, “I knew in twenty or thirty years I’d choose hotel shampoo over a family anyways, so I figured I’d just skip right to it.”

It’s been almost six months since we first left and Lee’s usefulness has pretty much been used up. There are no more magazine interviews, no more contracts being overnighted to the venue, and no more throngs of admirers. He didn’t know how to be famous, so he said the wrong things and got his picture taken with the wrong people. Not the people who have wrongness built into their image, but the people who have no image and promote Lee, albeit by association, as about as exciting as he really is, which is about as exciting as most of us, though we’re smart enough to fluff the truth.

He isn’t going to be broke or anything when the tour’s over. He’s still got offers he’s already been signed on to do, guaranteed money coming his way, but I think he knows that he has a year or two left in his career before he has to stop everything and find something else to do, go away for awhile in hopes that he is missed and then subsequently loved upon rearrival.

Vince and I get to the venue early and hear something coming from the stage. It’s Lee, not amplified at all, just standing in his normal spot doing his act, the first act he had when he started on tour. Bad gags about airports and his dick and comic books, but material that is all his. There’s a security guard in the way back watching him but not listening and there’s me and Vince standing off to the side. Lee doesn’t see us and he just barrels through his act, not fumbling the words, not throwing in any sitcom catchphrases. Then he stops and says, “I forget.”

It’s quiet. I visibly stiffen up my back and shoulders. Vince elbows me in the ribs lightly and says, “What, you don’t think this is funny?”

Author Biography

BIO: Ryan Werner is a janitor from Wisconsin. He runs the music/literature project Our Band Could Be Your Lit. He’s a six foot, hot look, all American male.

Year of the Rabbit - W.M. Butler

on the theme of Childhood

Tú Nián*
(Year of the Rabbit)

The path was narrow. It wound in a lazy meandering way, cloistered on each side with thickets of tall birch. It wasn’t until the path peaked in a broad slanted rise that Soong realized that he was lost. Cursing his luck, he spun around trying to gather his bearings. How was this possible? Thought Soong. Had his own feet not touched every blade of grass, bled on every stone from the abandoned iron smelting plant to Hu’s Peach orchards? Had he not spent six summers running wild with a pack of gangly village boys, planning mock wars from the gnarled juniper tree behind his Uncle Ji’s farm, to wage battle on the Monkey Kings who laid claim to everything from the Moon Shadow Bridge to the KTV in the northern corner of the village? How could Soong be lost in the very place he was born? How was it that he did not recognize this path or these trees?

Angry at himself for not being attentive, but more so at Piao Xu for taunting him today after class, he stood with his fists clenched and his whole body rigid. He stomped his foot in frustration, kicking up small plumes of dirt that swirled for a brief and tumultuous moment, only to settle back down as if there had been no disturbance at all. Even the dirt seemed to be mocking Soong. His temper burned hot at the memory of his loss of face on the playground earlier that day and how Piao had made him look the fool. Soong wanted to smash in Piao’s smug, stupid head. How dare that fat dog turd make him kneel before his classmates and lick a half-rotted, fly infested jiaozi! But what could Soong do? Piao was much bigger than he and to make matters worse Piao was now the new leader of the army of boys that Soong himself had recently put together and trained. The fact that his own men, should oust him for the likes of that pudgy fool, was unbearable to Soong. It was the lowest thing his men could have done! And to think that Soong welcomed Piao into his band when the boy first arrived at the school, and all he got for his kindness was betrayal. Some men it would seem, where just born bastards.

When Soong fled the schoolyard that morning, his eyes stung hot with salted tears. He stopped and turned, raised his fists towards the crowd of boys who stood jeering at him and yelled,

“I, Soong Zhi Wei, will return! I will have my vengeance!”

The boys taunted him; mockingly wiping imaginary tears from their eyes while Piao Xu held his bulging gut and laughed the hardest of all.

Enraged and upset, Soong had no recollection of which way he ran or for how long. Soong was lost. All he knew was that dusk was coming fast. If he did not find his way home within the next forty minutes he may very well have to spend the night outside. Soong was about to turn back the way he had come when he was startled by a rustling in the underbrush to his left. He called out with whatever bravado he could muster but his voice got choked up and ended up a mere whimper.

“Who goes there?”

There was a pause as the rustling stopped, then the movement started again. Soong braced himself for whatever came out of those bushes. Hanging on a cliché, he told himself that he would stand and fight, and no longer would he be pushed or bullied. Thinking that perhaps some of the boys lead by Piao had followed him in the hopes of tormenting him some more, he quickly lost some of his steel but somehow managed to steady his nerves again.  He stood ready, challenging whomever was in the bushes to come out and face him like a man.

It was no man that emerged, but a small charcoal coloured rabbit. Feeling relieved but foolish at his momentary lapse into cowardliness, Soong chastised the tiny animal for frightening him. The young animal with its dark glimmering eyes quietly observed Soong as though it were mocking him for being such an idiot. Then without ceremony, it turned and leapt away through the tangled brush. Soong was insulted by the little Black’s indifference. He debated whether he should go after that rabbit and capture it. He hadn’t had good meat for sometime and since he was most assuredly going to be late getting home, perhaps some fresh rabbit for the table might appease his mother’s anger.

And so it was in the way that boys have of never truly thinking a situation through, Soong left the path and entered the thicket of birch in the hopes of trapping the Black that had snubbed him. It’ll serve that little shit right if I eat him, and won’t mother be so proud that her youngest boy was clever and brave enough to wonder into a strange wood on a strange path to capture dinner for the family, thought Soong.

Tracking and trapping rabbits was nothing new to Soong. A boy his age was used to lurking after small prey in the forest. His elder brother had taught him the skills he needed to be a successful hunter. He was pretty sure that he was the best trapper of animals in the whole village; even his brother had often praised his quickness. Yet Soong knew he was at a disadvantage, as rabbits are known to be clever themselves, and not inclined to end up in the cooking pot. He knew that it was best to hunt them with a partner; one person to flush the animal towards its den and the other to wait nearby to grab it and snap its neck before it went to ground. He did not have a partner and so went with his next best option. He placed his schoolbooks on the ground and unfastened the young pioneers scarf from around his neck, he then fashioned a noose of sorts. Digging in his lunch canister, he pulled out some raw vegetables his mother had packed for his lunch that day but which he did not eat. Instead he had opted to save them for his favorite pig at The Model Workers Pig Farm, which was just around the bend from his house. Soong scanned the moist ground looking for tracks of his prey, knowing it couldn’t have gone far. A few paces in front of him he spotted a tiny indentation in the soil and from the paw print’s direction, followed it until he found another tiny print leading into a hole. Quietly he crept over to the burrow and placed the vegetables a few inches from the entrance, scattering dirt over the makeshift noose to mask his scent.

He crouched down just off to the side to wait patiently.

He didn’t have long to wait. A black head soon jutted out from the hole and an obsidian nose twitched, testing the air for danger. After what seemed like an eternity, the Black cautiously edged towards to food. When the animal finally was in position, Soong snapped the noose closed. He pulled the rabbit towards him, picking it up, ready to ring its neck. As the initial snap of the noose had not worked, he brought the panicked creature up to his chest and placed his fingers around its neck. He could feel the lighting beat of its heart, the surging struggle of the Black’s body vainly attempting escape, lashing out with a silent scream, biting at the air for flesh which with to connect. Soong made ready for the killing stroke but stopped short. Something about the animals struggle began gnawing within him. He held the black close and felt the thumping terror of its heart, tasted its fear on the very edge of his tongue.  He felt the urge to kill slowly ebb away.

Was this creature not in the very same position in which he himself had been only a short time ago, tortured as he had been by Piao and his band of thugs? Was he not the same as this creature, scared and all alone in the darkening woods? How could Soong be the person to end the Black’s life when he himself knew the terror of being hunted? The anger and shame of being chased and forced to debase himself in front of his peers slacked somewhat, settling deeper within, and like a bandage, the compassion for the hare and its plight was placed over his anger. Yet, it was mixed with the pity he himself felt at his own weakness, and this he began to impose on the rabbit.

Soong stood with the small Black clasped to his chest. He stroked the animal, cooing softly to calm the wretched thing that had come so close to death. Soong did not want to let it go so he decided to place it in his coat to take it home. He would have to be sure to hide it from his family or they would most assuredly want to eat it. As the last of the sun began to sink beneath the horizon, gloaming set in. Soong began formulating a plan. All that was left for him to do was find his way home.

∞

Soong skulked around the eastern side of the school, peeking his head around the corner, cautiously looking for Piao and his gang. The traitors who used to be his friends were nowhere to be seen, and neither was the fat bastard, Piao. Last night when Soong had finally made his way home, his mother had given him a solid beating with the business end of a foot massager, leaving a cluster of perfectly uniform bruises in the shape of little circles on his shoulders and arms. Before the beating he had hidden the Black in an abandoned chicken coop on the edge of their tiny piece of land. Soong took his mother’s thrashing in his typically stoic way, which only made his mother beat him harder, but it wasn’t as though his mother was unusually cruel to him. His older brother had gotten his fair share of punishment over the years too, but Soong couldn’t help but think his mother always added a little extra to his punishment.

Soong had managed to elude Piao and his lackeys all the way through to lunch by hiding in a clump of bushes by the older children’s territory. Sitting on his school bag, Soong drew in his notebook blueprints for the house he would build the little rabbit. He also sketched a map to the thicket of birch were he had found it. While Soong had avoided the brunt of Piao’s attention that day in the yard, he was still at his mercy in the classroom where later Piao and some of the other boys shot him threatening glares or bumped into him on their way to the waste basket or the washroom while the teacher’s back was turned. At one point Lin Lui, a girl who sat behind him passed Soong a folded slip of paper. Once opened he discovered a crude drawing depicting Soong eating a piece of pig shit while rocks were being tossed at him. When he turned to glare at Piao, the fat boy only smiled and petted his lunch box. A boy next to him alluded to throwing a stone at Soong’s face. At that point the teacher tossed a hunk of chalk from the front of the room, hitting Soong with a dusty thump on the back of his head. The students laughed and Soong received a strong reprimand for not paying attention. Soong could have defended himself, could have shown the teacher the evidence that Piao was trying to kill him, but it would have just made matters worse. If that pack of rabid dogs ever caught him alone he would be a dead man for sure, not to mention the fact that the teacher might not even listen to reason or might even beat him before he could defend himself. Soong stayed quite, spending the rest of the class silently ranking what level of hell was appropriate for Piao and his cohorts.

When the bell sounded, Soong was out of the class in a leap and bound, running and sticking close to the school’s walls. If he could get a decent head start he would be able to avoid the attention of the other boys. To give himself a fighting chance he bolted in the opposite direction of his usual way home, this time cutting across the sports pitch towards the path where he had found the little Black. This was easy to find as he had gotten his bearings on his way home the previous night.

Soong’s first task was to find his way back to the rise in the path and back to the spot where he had found his rabbit. Once there, he would use fallen branches to construct a frame for the house he would build it. It would do no good for his friend to live underground if a nice warm home was available. He had pilfered his father’s tool shed for some nails but had decided not to take the hammer just incase it was noticed as missing. Instead he used a rock to pound the nails into the frame. He made quick work of building it and decided that on the upcoming Sunday after his chores and homework were done, he would take some of the scrap chicken wire from the coop and complete the little house for his friend.

∞

When Sunday finally arrived, Soong sped through his work at lighting speed with what appeared to be much enthusiasm. His parents were pleased that their youngest son was finally resigning himself to his future duties as the master of the farm. This pleased them greatly, as Soong could sometimes be difficult and brooding about his lot in life. All the family’s money went to their eldest son — their hope for a better life in their old age — once he had finished top of his class in university and found a job with a high paying salary that is. When Soong said he was going to meet some of his friends at the pond to catch toads his parents were happy to let him go. His mother felt that maybe she had been too forceful in her attentions when Soong had come home so late the other day. As Soong ran for the far end of the field his mother called out,

“Bring us home some fat toads for supper tonight! It’s been so long since we’ve had some good toad!”

Soong stopped and turned back to wave to his mother then began running again. Once out of sight he hunched down in the field and pulled away some dead grass and dirt to reveal the stash of chicken wire he had snatched and placed there earlier in the day. Once he had collected his supplies and headed towards his spot, Soong cut across the Zhang land and followed it along a twist in the murky, slow moving creek. When he recognized the stand of birch in the distance he picked up his pace in anticipation. Soong sung softly to himself as he drew nearer the trees. Finally, he found his way to the little house he was building and set to work. It wasn’t long before his construction was complete as all he really needed to do was hammer in the mesh over the frame and fashion a lid from some scrap wood and fronds he had gathered. He even went so far as to camouflage the whole thing in case someone happened to stumble upon his secret project. Satisfied with himself and the house, he squatted down, resting his elbows on his knees, and admired his work. Running over the finalities of his plan, Soong dug into his pocket to bring out a steamed bun his mother had made for breakfast but that he had tucked away for just this moment. The bun was filled with the chalky sweet texture of red bean paste. He sucked in a sharp gulp of breath as the sweetness tickled one of his teeth that had turned black and was ready to fall out. His mother was known in the village for having the second best sweet buns in the village, with the honour of the best buns going to his grandmother; a point his mother constantly griped about. Either way, the bun was soft and delicious and because it had sat in his pocket, close to his body during the day’s labor, the bun gave the illusion of still being warm from the steamer. With two more gulps the bun was gone. Soong wiped his hands on the sleeve of his jacket and stood up. Tomorrow after school would be the day he brought his Black to its new home. He would run home after school and then after his work was done, he would sneak the rabbit out of its hiding place and bring it back here. In high spirits, Soong cleaned up the area and did one final scan of the surroundings to see if he himself could notice the little hutch with all its cloaking. Satisfied with the job, he turned for home.

∞

Soong was trapped, his back against the rough wooden wall of an outhouse, surrounded on all sides by enemies, with their leader the fat and foul Piao glowering smugly at Soong. Soong hadn’t been quick enough today in avoiding the boys’ attention. They had lulled him into complacency by ignoring him and even being civil towards him during class.  They didn’t even hassle him on the playground during break.

Fool! Soong scowled, scolding himself internally for letting his guard slip and being caught so easily.

“So! You think you are better than us, eh? Think you can just go around avoiding us? I’ll show you, you fatherless dog!”

Piao grinned, giving the signal for the other boys to move forward. Piao would never lift a finger to partake in the torments heaped upon Soong. Instead, he would direct the other boys, and it was they who would do the fat boy’s dirty work. As a matter of fact Piao had already gained the nickname “Little Chairman” for his ability to inspire his followers into committing these crimes against Soong. Maybe it was because Piao was richer than the other boys and didn’t want to soil himself with the dirty work, but Soong really thought it was because Piao wanted a distance between himself and the actions of the group. If push came to shove he could deny accountability by saying he himself never laid a finger on Soong . Soong could tell Piao was a calculating bastard. There was a coldness to him, and Soong knew that if ever these little exercises in humiliation where discovered by an adult that Piao held enough power over the other boys that they would never renounce him. They all feared having Piao’s attentions visited upon them. Soong was helpless and these cruelties that he was forced to endure would most likely continue forever. How could he win? How could one boy be victorious over a whole gang of bullies? Still, Soong was not one to give up without a fight. He had his pride and he wasn’t going down that easily. As the boys closed in, he made a break for it, first with a feint to the left, but then suddenly he broke to the right. He almost made it, but there were just too many of them. He struggled like a newly branded mule but it wasn’t enough; the boys had him pinned.

“Where’s your vengeance now?” sneered Piao.

“Xie ni ma de bi!” spat Soong.

Piao’s face burned red at the insult, but his eyes grew colder. He screwed up a grimace, winding it down into an insolent, malevolent smirk, smeared with something that scared Soong, something he couldn’t name. With a simple wave of his hand, suggesting all had been planned out earlier and in great detail. Piao gave the order to dump Soong into the outhouse pit. Four boys carried him by his arms and legs to the other side of the shed while another opened the door. Struggle as he might, he quickly lost ground. Fear of being shoved into a dank, putrid hole filled with shit and piss sapped the last of his fighting spirit, and as he fell into the blackness he felt the shame of giving up build within him, felt it, even stifle the urge to vomit at the stench. When he hit the night soil, he hit face first. Covered in shit and suddenly realizing his predicament, he tried to find leverage to boost himself out, but the walls of the pit wear slimy and smooth, carved into a clay deposit. His struggling only served to sink him deeper into the muck and filth. Looking upwards towards the hole in the wooden bench he could see Piao smiling cruelly down at him, laughing. But even this kind of shaming wasn’t enough for Piao; he went further, turning and taking down his pants. He squatted, and blocking out what little light there was, Piao spewed a steaming barrage of crap down on Soong. When he was done, Piao invited the others to do the same. At this point it was almost a blessing that most of the boys only urinated. Soong, crying and enraged, tried to sling clumps of shit in the hopes of hitting someone, but that just made matters worse.

“Sling shit at us, will you? You stupid egg!” yelled Piao, pausing only to light a firecracker that he then tossed down the hole.

This went on for some time, until all the boys had tossed their stash of firecrackers, until their bowels were empty. Soong was alone in the dark, on his knees. He cried and could do nothing. When the boys finally left, they closed the door and Soong was encased in utter darkness. Weeping bitterly, he could do nothing but wait for someone to come along and rescue him. As the tears streamed down his face mixing with smears of shit, he thought of his plans for the day and how they had been crushed. He thought about how his Black must feel living life underground; he knew now how awful it must be. At least he still had his friend. Soong calmed himself thinking about the rabbit; he must get out. He had someone depending on him.

It wasn’t until a couple of tourists from the city stopped near the road to use the toilet that Soong was found. Hours had passed, though they felt like days. One could imagine how surprised a city person, or anyone for that matter, would be to hear a cry for help as he sat down to relieve himself inside an almost derelict outhouse on some backwater country road. After the two men had managed to get Soong out of his predicament, both were slightly disgusted but amused by the sight of poor Soong covered from head to toe in shit. Soong was too far gone now to even notice the gentle ribbing the two men gave him; he simply walked away towards home without a word, leaving the tourists scratching their heads in confusion over the whole ordeal.

When he arrived home, his mother beat him with the broom so as not to soil herself for his condition and his father reprimanded him for not fighting back, and both his parents tried to ply from him, who had done such a foul thing to him, but Soong refused to tell. He would not say, which only made the beating and reprimanding worse. Soong’s mother took him outside to the water barrel and made him scrub with a week’s worth of soap that was meant for the whole family until he was rubbed red and raw. Soong hadn’t been this clean ever in his whole life yet still he felt slime on his skin and no amount of washing would ever clean it away. Without a word or dinner, Soong went to bed and softly cried until sleep overtook him.

∞

Strangely, the boys at school were laying low and no longer antagonizing Soong. It seemed that word had spread of what had happened to him. His mother, thinking only to protect her son, had told several neighbours what had happened in the hopes of finding the culprits responsible. The neighbours in turn spread the word. What Soong’s mother couldn’t have known was that by spreading the gossip she had made it all the more embarrassing for her son, who instead of having to stand up against the usual bullying, now had to endure uncomfortable glances and the whispering that started whenever he turned his back on a group of children and sometimes even adults. When he turned to face the offending persons, they would stop talking and stare through him as if he wasn’t even there. Piao and the boys who instigated the attack were smart enough not to gloat over their involvement and stayed out of the situation as much as possible so as not to be investigated. Still, they often shot him smug, knowing looks that just made the insult Soong felt even worse.

Weeks passed like this. Soong closed off from his family and peers, quietly completing his duties around the house and his schoolwork, but he barely uttered a word to anyone. He became shy and unable to concentrate. The only time he felt at all at peace was when he would sneak out to visit his friend in the abandoned chicken coop. Sometimes he slipped out of the house at night to sit and talk to the little Black and bring it scraps. Sitting there holding the shivering animal, burying his hands into its soft pelt, he began to talk to it, sharing his secrets, his fear and the embarrassment he felt over his current situation. He told the Black of his anger towards his parents and of his hatred for those bastards at school who did Piao’s bidding and for Piao himself. Soong vehemently described his hatred for Piao. He lamented to his companion of all the ways he wished Piao would get what he deserved, the pain and torment he wished to inflict on the fat boy. Through it all the Black merely twitched its nose, burrowing deeper into Soong’s arms for warmth, its whiskers brushing against the upturned bareness of the boy’s wrist.

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” whispered Soong. “After my work is done I will take you to your new home, where we can both be safe.”

He tucked the animal away in its temporary home and slipped back inside where he fell asleep peacefully for the first time in a long time.

∞

Soong spent the whole afternoon in the copse of trees, sitting and playing with his friend. He had just put the animal back into the makeshift hutch when he noticed another rabbit in the brush. Thinking how lucky he was to spot it and how wonderful it would be for his pet to have a friend, he set about capturing it. The new addition was a large Brown, and it was more crafty than the Black, but not as quick, and soon he had it. Placing it into the hutch he noted, there was little room left. He would have to pilfer more material from his home and build an addition. So that is what he did, and over the next couple of weeks he made the rabbit hutch larger, then larger again as he captured more rabbits. He began going to his secret hideaway every day after school and each Sunday afternoon; eventually he had fifteen of the animals in total. Soong would spend hours talking to his new friends and making up games where he was the general and the rabbits his trusted men, loyal only to him. He imagined great wars and conquests for himself and the rabbits. Often he would daydream about capturing and putting Piao on trail for his crimes.

Time passed this way and Soong was happy living in the world he had created for himself and the captured animals, but through it all, though he maintained a strong attachment to the little black one, the one he had caught first. The Black was always by his side during Soong’s little adventures, always his confidant. His best friend. So involved and consumed was he by his make believe with the little creatures that the rest of the world began to fade away. The boys who had harassed him so relentlessly had stopped their attentions and left him alone, perhaps due to the change in Soong. Before, Soong would have fought back when being picked on but now when confronted with any violence Soong would just go soft, become despondent and would not speak or raise a hand in his own defense. Piao and the others were confused and unsettled by Soong’s lack of self-preservation and so eventually pulled back. Soong soon began to forget about his old tormentors and it seemed his tormentors forgot about him.

∞

Soong was in a hurry to make it home before dark. He double checked the latches on the hatch to make sure his friends where secure, and then quickly bolted for home. Perhaps this was the reason he hadn’t noticed a rustle deep in the trees. A short time later, perhaps only a few minutes after Soong was gone, Piao stepped from the trees, followed by his group of boys. Piao and the others had followed Soong that day and kept hidden, watching Soong play with the rabbits. Shortly before Soong left, one of the boys had made a move to step out into sight, to surprise Soong but Piao held him back, shaking his head. The boy did as his leader instructed. Piao thought it would be much more interesting if they waited for Soong to leave so that they could take all the time they needed to be about their business. Piao stepped to the hutch and lifted the latch that held the lid down, with a vague smile, Piao set to work. The other boys hesitated only a moment before they to joined in.

∞

Soong was surprised that after all this time Piao and the others would pay him any notice. They had cornered him after school near the Model Workers Pig Farm. Soong began to slip into despondency again in preparation of the beating he was about to receive. His eyes became distant and he seemed to shrink in upon himself. He waited for the inevitable, but nothing happened. The others simply stood there waiting. It was Piao that stepped forward, smiling cordially, almost as a friend. Soong was weary but curious. Piao moved closer until he stood only inches away from Soong. Soong could feel the warm, slightly rancid breath from the other boy’s breakfast of pickles and congee wafting from the other boy’s mouth. Soong closed his eyes in anticipation and dread at what the other boy would do. Shivering in uncontrollable spasms, Soong choked down gulps of air that seemed to catch on the edge of his tongue, only to roll like sand down his throat. Still, nothing happened. Soong could hear a scattered chuckle rise from the group of boys; still he did not open his eyes. The sensation Soong felt next shook him awake.

Something touched the smooth flesh of his cheek. It was velvet soft and sent thrills of terror though his whole body. Soong’s eyes snapped open. Piao stood there his eyes wide with sadistic glee. He held a shiny black pelt to Soong’s face. The realization of what the pelt was struck Soong like a bolt. He wanted to scream, to smash through Piao and the others. Tears welled up in his eyes. The other boys began laughing, finally seeing an emotional reaction from Soong. Soong’s whole body went cold, but his brain burned incandescent. In a blindness, he had never felt before he found a strength he thought buried for good. With a terrible building rage he placed his hands on Piao’s chest and pushed with every ounce of strength he could muster. Piao was sent flying backwards and landed flat on his back on the dirt road. Squealing, Piao lay struggling and twisting in an attempt to regain his feet. Soong bolted, running faster than he had ever run, his heart thundering. The wind whistled through his ears, numbing all other sounds, even the cascading, clatter of his own thoughts. His legs pumped like pistons churning beyond their capabilities. He flew down the road towards his friends, dreading what he would find. By the time Piao had regained his footing, Soong was out of sight. The gang gave chase, knowing where Soong was headed. They did not run with the fervor of Soong, knowing as they did the other boy’s destination; they took their time running in a scattered casual lope towards their prey.

When Soong finally burst through the trees, crashing though the scrub and unearthed roots of plants and smaller bushes it was as a crazed bull. He stopped dead in his tracks and was struck dumb by the carnage. The earth itself seemed to spin around him as he stared at the massacre before him. The tattered remains of his friends lay spread across the ground, patches of fur had crudely been ripped from bodies. Ears frayed bloody at the ends were smeared on the trunks of trees. Hunks of flesh lay scattered without ceremony.  Legs were pulled from some bodies while other carcasses were left intact, their necks twisted in odd angled ways. Blood stained the lighter surfaces around the slaughter grounds. Ominous dark patches had seeped into fallen foliage and soil. Horrified, Soong hunched over and vomited, spewing the contents of his stomach onto the ravaged body of the large Brown. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, trying to regain some semblance of composure, then went wild eyed again at what he saw before him. Caged, cruelly wrapped in chicken wire, hanging from a low branch above the ruins of the hutch hung his Black, skinned yet perfectly intact. It was as if the utmost care had been taken in its preparation and presentation. The remains of his rabbit swayed back and forth with the rhythm of a gentle breeze. Soong choked back the bile rising in his throat and stumbled the few yards to the remains of the ravaged animal.

He stood before the carcass, his mind imprinting the image of it, a hot iron branding the scene into his brain. White-hot rage seeped into every cell of his body. His every nerve, stripped raw at the tragic injustice of this carnage. Then, his sorrow and anger evaporated in a hissing vapour. All that remained was a steel, hard anvil of hate and the horrendous desire for retribution. He would make his stand, here, amongst the fallen. He would not retreat. He would not fail. He would see this through. An icy calm sheathed Soong as he prepared for the battle ahead.

∞

Soong could hear the boys calling out to him in mock concern, their laughter lolling, ruefully off their tongues as they loped through the trees. Twigs and brush crackled beneath their feet. He held his ground, an eerie patience emanated from some new dark corner of his being. When the boys finally broke into the clearing, it was with Piao in the lead.  They formed a loose semi circle around Soong.  Piao stepped forward to gloat as the others hung back. Piao’s words where wasted on Soong, he let Piao’s little speech pass him by, his only concern was to do what must be done but to do so he must trap Piao. He must lead the boy into action. If he could not, the others would tear him to shreds. With frightening ease Soong began spitting a torrent of venomous insults at Piao. Accusing the fat boy’s mother of being a prostitute, his father of wearing a green hat and he himself of being a useless and stupid mistake. One his parents tried to destroy with the help of Auntie Mei the midwife. It was that failed attempt, Soong insisted that had made Piao the retarded piece of turd he was today. He continued with his insults, accusing Piao of fucking his own sister, of drinking from his mother’s breast even now at the age of twelve. He spewed forth any and every slur that thundered into his head. Even going so far as to say that Piao was born dickless — a true eunuch. Nothing more than a girl with little girl parts. Piao went rigid as the onslaught continued, his face turning from red to purple. His eyes bulged from their sockets, his hands clenched into whitened balls of dangerous anger. Even Piao had his limits, and knew that he must act. The other boys had already started laughing at Piao; they were enjoying the slander Soong was throwing at the other boy. Piao knew he must act or lose face. He made his move.

From the instant the fat boy began his charge, Soong was sure he could see the seed of fear sprouting within Piao’s eyes but this was not the time for such concerns, nor for pity. As Piao surged towards him, as he closed in; Soong in a gracefully elegant motion brought the large stone he had used as a make shift hammer out from behind his back and in what seemed like a beautifully slow and eternal arc, brought it crashing down on the crown of Piao’s skull. A sickening crack echoed throughout the woods, a spray of dark blood misted from the open wound. The stuff seemed to crystallize in the sunlight that leaked through in shafts from the canopy above. Piao crumpled to the ground in a limp heap. A thin spurt of blood squirted from the indent in the top of his head. A gaping silence permeated though the woods; even the birds had stopped singing. Soong stood above his enemy, bathed in righteousness, drunk on the blood lust that coursed through him. The group of boys gawked at the scene before them. Moments passed, encased in the molasses of time, giving the illusion of days until finally one boy; perhaps the youngest of them began blubbering inconsolably. The spell had been broken. Some of the boys wordlessly turned and ran. Others stumbled away, some screamed. Others wept. They all fled, leaving Soong to his revenge.

*Author’s Note: While China has no indigenous species of rabbits it does have several native species of hares. The Chinese applied their word for hare — (túzi) to the first rabbits brought to China. In the common Chinese use of the word there is rarely any distinction made between the two. The word is now erroneously back translated into English as “rabbit”. Thus, in this story, rabbit is used instead. This is for purely an aesthetic choice by the author.  

Author Biography

W.M. Butler is a Candian writer living in Shanghai, China. He is a regular contributing author to and creative editor for www.haliterature.com.

On the theme of Childhood

Aspirations

The cashier looked at Elmo kind of funny when he ordered the Triple Stacker, through his missing teeth, calling the sandwich “The Triple Meater”.

Usually it was just the crappy kids meal, with worthless plastic doohickey toys found inside, that offered bonuses. If only these places did something that catered to adult tastes, say like a “Jaws” themed adult meal featuring Quint and Brody…”you’re going to need a bigger sandwich”.

Hilary Swank wasn’t on his cup either. Elmo had a thing for women like her. He was obsessed with the movie “Boys Don’t Cry”, but later, didn’t understand how she grew from that boy to tittering into a fine looking actress. Being chopper less, he adored her big teeth. The last woman he paid for had a big grill and a big truck, taking all the money he had. “Well, there’s always next month’s check,” he thought, coughing an onion ring away from his lungs, before swallowing it down.

As a kid, if he’d had ideas to save those themed glasses; like the ones he remembered owning–Bugs Bunny, Star Wars, Camp Snoopy, Grimace, shit he had so many, he’d be able to sell them now and be all set with cash for days.

“The meals here are not as cheap as they used to be,” he reflected, as he bit down hard, but the wait was shorter the food hotter, when his number came up fast.

————————

Action Figures

Author Biography

Timothy Gager is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry. He lives on www.timothygager.com

On the theme of Love

AS LIGHT FAINTED

Mom sold a cow in a vicinal village; hence she looks out for it whenever driving past a herd of cattle. She never could discern the cow yet, so it hurts her. Sure she wouldn’t stop a bus by a pasture to look for her dear cow now, when so much time passed, though she still hopes that it would recognize the master. However, what for should she stop a regular bus there?

… I said that I wasn’t against doing shopping with her, why should I, and it was the only truth that I allowed myself that time. Shopping is ever a good chance for making choice, there is no compelling.  She was looking for a gift to her friend Natasha, in spite that she keenly tried garments on herself.

For some reason she had almost no make-up and wore somber clothes. Or was it a make-up attracting little attention, one could never tell that. Still there was little color about her, except a red gym bag in her hand. What for had she called me and made a date: to inspect me, to look into an old mirror, a turbid one?Опоздание

After a little delay she had swiftly showed up at a bus station then. I was aware she would come without fail, no doubt, but I was taken aback when she cropped up. I didn’t give her a smack on the cheek, as if we hadn’t lived together several years ago. Five years ago. Then I had singled out her for dim light in her grey eyes, those turned into green while looking into them closely.

And again she made complaints against a chilly day, she felt cold as ever, as it had been with her previously. I had to break invisible ice and offered my hand, just to make her warm. I was so rash to wring her hand that it made her utter a scream: oh, you broke my nail!  Her shriek in a loud voice in a near-empty bleak hall proved to be so natural. The same way she would cry out unconsciously when in bed with me once. I mused if she was crying out similarly when she was with her husband then.

However, could we consider our meeting a date? If only I could be driving up a sumptuous car with an armful of flowers to take her to a restaurant! Maybe all the years she has been expecting it: fancied to drive with her man to a grand restaurant! It meant – with me; that’s why she had called me possibly. And I just took her to a cafe to have coffee. Like students.

It hadn’t occurred to me to turn up with a bouquet of five roses then, reckoning the years passed. Well, in so much time she might appeared right for the forfeited cry that struck me, it burst out so easily as if had been prepared well beforehand.

In addition she said that she turned out to be a good housewife, regularly baking pasty. I couldn’t imagine her making jam in summer or pickling cucumbers for winter. Yes, when with me she did her best to turn a dinner into a feast, and I had nothing against it, but I never knew when I’d be back in the evening. And I never had desire to warm up a dish, even mouth-watering one.

I didn’t tell her much at the meeting. I didn’t say that I was ever glad to her calls, and I knew her voice right away. For some reason I didn’t tell her that. And she was eager to hear from me that she was still young, and attractive, and seducing. Who could confirm it but me?

I could have told her that she hadn’t changed much if she was after that. But I didn’t utter it; I didn’t meet happiness in her eyes. The light fainted, that’s why I hadn’t recognized her in a moment, and it was enough for her to see that.

Afterwards I had a dream as if I had failed to identify her at the bus station, and I startled in my bed. On the other hand, was it a bad dream?

…Driving back I watched three girls in my bus, they were friends, students, going home to my town. One had wonderful black eyes and a shade of a smile I never got completely. Another wasn’t so sweet, she wore stylish glasses and some deep thought seemed to be concealed behind. At a terminal station a young man was waiting for them, just by himself. He picked the third girl, I had paid no attention. She had been sleeping all the time while travelling, and she had a drowsy look. Like a cow. And he took her home.

Still and all, I love natural flowers, somewhat faded…

Author Biography

Mr. Valery Petrovskiy is a journalist and short story writer from Russia.
Не is an English Department graduate at Chuvash State University, Cheboksary, graduated in journalism at VKSch Higher School, Moscow. He has been writing prose since 2005.  His writing has been published in English in Australia and the United States in The Scrambler, Rusty Typer, BRICKrethoric, NAP Magazine, Literary Burlesque, The Other Room, Curbside Quotidian, DANSE MACABRE, WidowMoon Press, PRIME MINCER, Apocrypha and Abstractions, The Legendary, The Fringe, Skive and Going Down Swinging magazines.