Category: Fiction

Heads turned as she walked through the door—conversations stopped mid-sentence, glasses halted halfway in their journeys to mouths, the record in the jukebox scratched to a halt—all in the space of a moment, as the heart of every man and woman in the establishment simultaneously skipped a beat in awe.

Her dress was a flowing dream of blood and flame, her hair a storm of darkest midnight.

She glided with inhuman grace through the crowded room, knots of people parting for her in her maddening approach to the bar.

“A drink, milady?” Andrew O’Donnell cocked a smile at her and raised a glass. No lesser man could have managed as much, and even Andrew, with a confidence cultivated over decades, almost stumbled in his delivery.

She gazed at him appraisingly, her eyes of storm-wracked sea looking through his façade to the innermost depths of his soul before she chuckled, a rolling thunder that he could feel deep within his abdomen. She licked her lips, “A drink would be lovely.”

“Whisky?”

A pearly-white, shark-like grin showed itself through the crimson of her lips. “Sure. I love a good spirit.”

Andrew gestured to the bartender—unnecessarily, given the way he was rooted to the spot. “Two shots of your finest.”

The bartender sprang to life, startled from his reverie. With practiced, almost reflexive movements, glasses were filled and placed on the bar. Andrew raised his drink. “To beauty?”

The woman smiled again. “Very well. To beauty.”

Taking a swig from his glass, Andrew studied the creature across from him. She had curves in all the wrong places—impossible forms that would make a geometer blush. There was an undulating quality about her, even while she was seemingly still. Her legs were like something from an Escher fever dream, as negative space became leg and vice versa. Horns curled upon her head like a crown or writhing mass of serpents. Her skin was bone white. Or was it raven black? Her hair was deep sea green. But hadn’t it just been blood red? She was, in short, like no woman he had seen before.

But there was something about her that seemed strangely familiar. Perhaps it was simply the familiarity of a beautiful woman, the aching reminder of the incompleteness of man, an Adamic yearning for one’s lost rib or a Platonic yearning for one’s severed half. Andrew raised a hand. “Care to dance?” The woman took it, and as the pair found themselves on the dancefloor, the jukebox shuddered to life once again.

It was an eerie song, raw and powerful, with shrieking violins, piercing flutes, a sinuous bassoon, and a driving, relentless beat. It was a song that Andrew had never heard before, but which he knew by note, echoes of something, something—but it was gone. As Andrew danced with the woman—and oh how she danced, spinning, whirling, writhing, her hair a luxurious, flowing set of drapes parting to reveal the changing scene, then closing again at the end of the act, the woman sometimes meeting his eyes from across the dancefloor with frightening intensity, sometimes so close that he could almost breathe her in—as Andrew danced with this woman, striving with all the energy in his feeble mortal frame to match her grace, her poise, her passion, he felt something coming up from somewhere deep within him, heard a voice whispering almost-comprehensible words just beyond his hearing, so that when the woman moved from the dancefloor to the exit then paused, throwing a glance of her eight segmented eyes over her shoulder in a way that was as much challenge as invitation, Andrew found his feet, without any conscious input from his brain, carrying him across the establishment to follow her out into the night.

The street outside was quiet. A streetlight flickered overhead. The street itself, usually busy even at this time of night, was completely empty, though parked cars lined either side. And directly in front of the entrance to the bar was a carriage.

It was a thing of steel and shadow, and it dwarfed the cars around it. Strange faces leered at him out of the hubcaps, and the wheels were wreathed in Saint Elmo’s fire. Harnessed to the front of the carriage were a pair of skeletal beasts, colossal megafauna from some ancient prehistoric age, with great fires beating within their ribcages and smaller flames flickering in their eye sockets as they turned to look at Andrew in curiosity. The woman smiled at him, and with a gesture of her taloned hand, the door to the carriage swung gracefully open. The woman floated into the carriage and then, extending a tentacle, helped Andrew in.

Andrew sat across from the woman, a part of him still in awe. What was he doing here? How was it that he was sitting in a skeleton-drawn carriage with a being of such breathtaking, awe-inspiring beauty? As he tried to piece together the events that brought him to this point, he saw a smile twitch at the lady’s lips.

“So, Andrew, do you know who I am?”

Andrew shook his head. Had he told her his name? “I don’t believe I do, my lady.”

The woman chuckled. “You will.” She turned her head to a window, gestured to it. Andrew looked out to see the city whipping past, cars motionless in their lanes warping to allow the carriage through. The city fell from sight, to be replaced with a landscape Andrew had never seen during his waking life. To the left, black earth, run through with cracks of glowing red stretched away to steel-blue mountains rising against a sky full of strange stars. To the right, cliffs, and then a vast green ocean swelling and crashing under a storm-wracked sky. The carriage turned to the right going up a winding road with dark, forbidding trees arching overhead before pulling to a stop in front of a large house. The doors opened and Andrew got out, helping the lady to the ground. She smiled as she put her hand in his.

“Come,” she said. And Andrew followed her.

They did not go into the house, but instead went down a path to a cliff overlooking the ocean. The woman gestured, and Andrew looked out across a silent sea to the moon, hanging blood-red in the sky. The air was still, and a smell of a sort of sulfurous petrichor hung in the air. There was a crack of thunder, and suddenly, Andrew knew where he was. He turned to the woman standing beside him. “Madi?” he asked.

The woman smiled widely, fangs visible in the moonlight, as Andrew drew his arms around her. He looked into her feline eyes, then brought her to him, planting a kiss on her pedipalps. “I knew you would remember,” she said.

And he did remember. Long nights as a child filled with what he first took to be nightmares. Otherworldly planes of existence. And a strange, ever-changing young girl whose name was Madixcthertakni, though in his youth, he could only call her Madi. He remembered her comforting him in his sleep after his traumatic move at the age of ten. And he remembered the last night, when she had told him that she couldn’t see him anymore, that her father, the king of the depths, would not allow it. But he also remembered her promise that she would find him one day. And she had, all these years later.

The pair walked back to the house. Madi gestured to the front door. “Stay a while?”

Andrew smiled. He would stay. And as he said so, looking deep into impossible eyes that held within them both the dark of the night and the spark of the fires of dawn, he felt himself falling into madness.

A madness indistinguishable from love.

You wouldn’t have wanted me to do this, I’m sure. You were always so optimistic. Even in those final days, you still tried to get me to smile, to laugh. And I did. But who is there to get me to smile now?

So today… Today I will do something. If there is a god in heaven—and how can there be otherwise since He sent you to me—I must trust that He is merciful. I must trust that He knows my weaknesses, and that He will forgive me.

So here I am on our back porch, shotgun on my knee. I’m switching the safety off.

I remember you as I first met you, with golden hair, sparkling green eyes, and the most radiant smile I had ever seen. I never dared dream that I would be waking to that smile for the next fifty years, but even at first meeting, I knew those eyes would never leave me.

Ah, those eyes. I remember when we went to Ireland for your friend’s wedding. I had heard it called the Emerald Isle, but all the green of Ireland couldn’t compare to your breathtaking eyes.

And that hair—spun gold like straw fresh off Rumpelstiltskin’s spinning wheel. It didn’t last much longer than my own unruly mop, but even when your gold turned to silver, you were still as beautiful and radiant as the sun.

I remember that radiance when I sit at a table suddenly much too large, sleep in a bed much too cold, live in a house much too empty. How can I help but remember, when every corner of every room is filled to overflowing with you? We built this home together—brick by brick, memory by memory. How can I stay in it alone?

I almost never cook now. I used to love cooking, but then, I always had someone to cook for. Somehow it rarely seems like it’s worth the effort anymore.

I know what you would say. You would tell me to get up and do something. You would tell me to go for a walk or paint or fish or garden. You would tell me to try a new restaurant or read a book or go see the fall leaves.

But I’ve tried all those things, and I remain empty inside. No, not just empty, but incomplete. All these years I’ve been part of a “we.” A beautiful, wonderful “we.” And I can’t go back to being an “I.”

So I raise my gun.

 

And lower it again. Put the safety back on. Set down the gun. My hands are trembling.

I rub the wooden armrest of the porch swing, worn by the years, and looking at the empty seat next to me, I can almost see you there, reading. I look out at the yard, covered with leaves ready for the raking, and can almost hear your feet crunching the leaves underfoot. I feel a sharp gust of wind and can almost smell the scent of your apple pie, tantalizingly close to being cool enough to eat carried on the breeze.

And I know I can’t do it. I can’t leave all this behind.

There are tears running down my cheeks and I don’t know why. I desperately want to see you again, but not right now, not this way.

I hope my time comes soon. I miss you terribly. But for now, it’s starting to get dark, and it’s about time I start cooking dinner.

Far away from any city, in a land dominated by mountain peaks and inhabited largely by goats is a small valley. Completely surrounded by inhospitable mountains, this valley is nevertheless, by some miracle of earth or heaven, a fertile place. A small river runs through the valley before disappearing underground, and there is a grove of wild apple trees. Largely isolated, this vale has few visitors. However, tucked away in this mountainous Eden, there is a building.

Some of the few who know of the valley say that this small wooden structure is as old as the mountains surrounding it—older—and that the mountains themselves are nothing more than a garden wall erected by whatever god first built it. Others say that the humble construction is the house made by our first parents before they left the valley or were driven therefrom. What all agree upon is the building’s ancient origin. Indeed, this solitary structure has been in the valley for as long as the collective memory of song and story.

Whatever the building was when it was first framed, it is now a shrine. The few scattered tribes who know the valley call it holy, and to them the shrine is more—a holy of holies. Every spring for the equinox, the local tribes come together to the valley, where they make sacrifices and celebrate together. They fix whatever damage the shrine has incurred over the past year, and they coat all the beams with a lacquer to prevent future wear. Then, on the night of the equinox, the oldest elder among them enters the shrine. From within a secret hiding place within the shrine, he withdraws a scroll and, standing upon the porch of the shrine, reads aloud from the scroll to all assembled.

The contents of the scroll are marvelous, for this scroll is but one volume of a vast book, each volume of which tells all of the events of a year. The scroll which the elder reads is that of the year which is to come. As the elder reads, all which is to come until the next spring equinox is revealed. He then carefully hides the scroll away and leaves the shrine for another year.

When the elder has finished his reading, a great feast is held, and all assembled drink deeply. As the night wears on, all in the valley grow weary from their revelry and fall into a deep sleep. When they have awoken, then, the events of the previous night, including the reading of the scroll, seem little more than a dream. Their annual ceremony done, the tribes scatter to their individual stretches of mountain.

Some may wonder why, after hearing of the events of the coming year, the people then engage in such revelry as to forget most of it. Many stories are devoted to explaining this. One is about a pair of brothers who were prophesied to kill each other and did so over the revelation. Another story tells about a couple who heard about a mild winter and so didn’t prepare enough.

However, by far the most common explanation is wrapped up in what the tribes round about call the book itself. For among them it is referred to as the Book of Lies. It may seem strange that a book telling all things in history should bear such an appellation. Certainly it might be said that such a book contains more truths than any other. However the tribes name the book not because they disbelieve its words, but for a deeper reason:

The people of these mountains hold to one belief above all others: that no one story can tell the whole truth. And that a book, no matter how complete, can never fully capture what is real. This makes the Book of Lies, by its seeming completeness, more dangerous and, in a way, less truthful than any others.

And yet, they still cannot reject such a sacred gift. So they do what they can: they learn, and then they forget.