Issue 69 June 2019 Flash Fiction Online June 2019

When the moon was full, Immer lowered her hair to the Earth, a silver net with snarls bound tight as a captain’s knot. Kneeling down, she plucked the strands of her hair like a harpist.

In the tension before dawn, Immer raised her hair, scooping birds and bugs away from the Earth. Immersed in her net, they dreamt. She ate the birds, swallowing them whole since she couldn’t bear the sound of small bones crunching. The bugs she cooked in a stew. Next came the bacteria and viruses, fungi and protozoa, which she brushed out of her hair as if they were burrs. With care, she sorted the smaller life forms.

Once done, she scattered the microorganisms above the Earth like rain, except for the most deadly and beautiful. Those, she sprinkled along the surface of the moon.

She was about to curl her hair into a bed when she felt a gentle tug. Something else was stuck in her locks.

Over the years, Immer had caught many things in her hair–slumbering bears and the bees who follow them; sticks, stones, and bones; bird nests (she was no friend to birds, although she loved their songs); smoke from wildfires, the smell lingering on her curls; yarn for a sweater, wood for a table, and other unmade things; the song of a cello (she still hears it, even though she’s combed out the melody hundreds of times); the light that comes over the mountains; half-chewed leaves; water.

Now she parted her hair to find a book submerged like an ocean chest under wispy waves, its gold-edged pages blooming with illustrations. Tales for children, but with darkness underneath. Immer read stories of girls who were barred from wolf-hungry woods, girls trapped in towers, girls running. Always running.

Where are the other stories? Immer thought, flipping through the pages with a prehensile lock. The stories of women who had no fear of the woods, who ran alongside wolves and swam in clear rivers. Older stories, and truer, of women who drank in dragon’s breath and spat out fire.

The next night, as her hair brushed against the Earth, something tugged hard. Again and again, that fierce pull. Sharpness bloomed in her scalp. Immer drew up her hair, hoping for another book.

Instead, a man in a fine vest clung to her curls.

Never before had a visitor ascended. The moon was no place for fragile bodies, with its barrenness and isolation, its subtle dust and solemn beauty.

Immer studied this human, who had come so unexpectedly. Loneliness crept over her like waves against the shore, a little at a time, until she was drenched. She wanted very much to speak to him. Perhaps she could point to the star of her birth and tell of how, when she came of age, her grandparents had wrapped her in their hair and catapulted her to this moon to hunt.

Immer curled her hair around the man so he could breathe and waited to see what he would do.

He stumbled forward and drank in her form, his mouth curving into a soft roundness. She did not like the way he looked at her, the sharpness in his eyes.

“You are beautiful,” he said. The first words from his mouth.

Her hair rushed back from him, streaming behind her, until only one lock remained curled around his head. This was not what she wanted to hear. This story, again. Her tongue was thick around human speech. “Go.”

“But–” He faltered. Pointed down to the Earth. “I have climbed so far.”

“Go,” she said, again.

This was not the fairytale settled in his bones. He was handsome, the lines of his face sharp, the shape of his shoulders firm.

“No,” she said to the unasked question, the form of this word so similar to the last. A warning.

He stepped toward her, his boots making harsh prints in the dust. The buttons on his vest sparkled like wicked stars.

The ending depends on the story you know.

In one version, she weaves a strand of hair into his eyes, releasing carefully sorted prokaryotes that immobilize him. Unlike the birds, he is too big to swallow whole.

In another version, he cuts off the lock of hair surrounding him, intending to keep it. Deprived of his oxygen source, he dies. She eats this one, too.

In another, he departs, descending her rope of hair. Perhaps her strange shaping of the word “no” is enough, or the glint in her eyes, or her hunger.

That night, she spread her hair over the moon entire, testing its crevasses. There were places she had not been, still. Her hair was growing longer.

Soon, her hair will grow long enough to reach past the sun. Long enough to slingshot her body over the universe, grabbing planets like pitons on a great climb upward. She will travel home and tell of a strange planet, one with birds and cellos, wedding rings, the terrible scent of smoke. She will tell of a book with gold-sharp pages and a hunger that woke within her like a flurry of beetle wings, alive and fragile and furious, until it came to settle, like the moon’s darkened dust, finally sated.

Upsurge and backwash. I am listening, listening very intently to the rush and ebb of the waves on the shore, to the sound wafting in through the open window, listening and waiting for you and trying not to think. Upsurge, back-

‘Hello,’ says the nurse. She glances at the open window, and then, not bothering to ask, smiling but business-like, goes to close it. ‘We’ll be starting in a minute.’ Another quick glance down at my fingers. ‘You’ll need to remove that.’

‘I should know by now. But no: half the time they have to remind me. I slide the ring off my finger: a pair of metal wires, gold and silver, coiling about one another like twinned snakes, strands of DNA. I cradle it in the palm of my hand as the nurse rolls up my sleeve, then sets about connecting me to the Path(o)x system. Here is another, far more complex set of wires. Yet I don’t feel a thing as each neural end slithers under my skin and connects with my nervous system.

‘You are wired up already when they wheel you in, and just need connecting. You are conscious, but your eyes are glazed and don’t seek mine. You seem unaware of your surroundings. Your skin is ashy, and taut over your bones, but the flesh beneath is slack with whatever they have pumped into you.

‘As the machine starts humming, I feel the nurse’s approving gaze on me. But I don’t want her approval. Don’t I? The rest of me might like someone to hold my hand, hold me, tell me how I brave I am.

‘First, a familiar tingling up my arms – muscles tensing beneath my skin, outside my control, small animals, snakes or mice. Then the pain. Familiar too. A member of the family, my inconvenient in-law.

‘Sine, cosine.

‘I remember when the disease first struck, when the pain invited itself in. I was horrified, of course. I wanted to do anything to protect you. Wanted to share it. And some part of me was proud of it: because it was how I knew I loved you, short as our relationship was then.

‘’It’s going to be like this,’ you told me. You were unsurprised – the disease ran in your family. Airy’s Neuropathy: a collection of symptoms (degenerative nerve damage, impaired movement and cognition, and above all the pain that claimed and wrecked you) with few explanations and fewer treatments. You’d always expected it. ‘There will be highs and lows.’

‘’For you and me both,’ I said. ‘We’ll help one another through it. Like…’ I thought for a second, came up with the stupid metaphor. ‘Sine and cosine. When you’re low, I’ll be high for you. When I’m low, you can be there for me.’

‘Later, when we took the tests, and passed – compatible, eligible for use of the newly created Path(o)x system – I was elated. Glad to be able to assuage some of your pain, of course. And proud, again. Self-sacrifice, sanctioned by science.

‘As I curl up and tense on the hospital bed, trying to find any position that will soothe me, however temporarily, you relax in yours. I fight the urge to be sick. You breathe in deeper. Some colour returns to your face. You almost resemble the person I fell in love with, years ago.

‘Path(o)x was sold remarkably well. Guaranteed pain relief in otherwise intractable cases, the possibility of neural regrowth and long-term improvement. It worked through brain- and nerve-stimulation, I learned, patterns of stimulation all the more efficient for being modelled on another’s nervous system. But what that fine-tuning meant – and here the saleswoman leaned back behind her desk, suddenly grave – was pain, for the sharer. Not always, but – often. Very often. Severe. She had to warn us.

‘I imagined the pain as liquid, cleanly and efficiently poured from one body to the other.

‘But nothing is clean. Nothing that humans share. I don’t mind – I kissed the sweat from your skin once. But I think back to myself, sitting in that office, with its smooth graphs plotted on gleaming white surfaces, dreaming a perfect, sterile future, and a perfectly balanced exchange.

‘I didn’t account for my weariness at appointment after appointment, no matter how nice the hospital. Hours lost in transportation, waiting rooms. The sight of you crumpled on a bed, the antiseptic smell I’ve come to hate. My own body rebelling (what a fool I’d been to ever crave pain). The thoughts that snaked in. Not exactly resentment, or regret, just thinking: what if I hadn’t met you? what if I’d never kissed you? Not cowardice exactly, just thinking: what if I left?

‘It hasn’t been one-sided. Saying otherwise would be a lie. I remember: you in remission, I jobless, inexplicable decompression, depression. We didn’t use Path(o)x then. I remember you holding me, stroking my hair, my back. Coaxing me out of bed, into life.

‘It’s never been a perfect transfer, a perfect exchange. The waves have never been so smooth. Our lovers’ mathematics didn’t account for that – our slow diminishing.

‘We’re not always below zero. After they unplug us, I lie in bed, shivering under the coverlet, waiting for the trembling to stop. I listen to the sound of the waves. I watch you. My ring is back on my hand, and yours, loose on thin fingers, is too. I wait until you open your eyes.

‘You look at me, and your eyes are clear. You smile. It’s a tight, weary smile, and you’re not oblivious, I know. You’ve seen my fears, and you’ve taken them in, you’ve made them yours and then given them back to me, augmented. How could you not? But for now you smile, weakly and through what’s left of your pain, because you love me and I love you.

‘And I think: we’ll have another go yet, another turn, another sinking and another rising.

‘Sine, cosine.

The end of the phone line goes click and my computer terminal displays the script: “We’re offering a special deal on a two-year subscription to your favorite magazines.” My boss paces across the gray utility carpet, hand on hip. His secretary sits in the office, watches us employees through the plate-glass window, and listens in. She comes over to tell me what I did wrong, how I could’ve won the sale. After, the two of them whisper in the corner and point at their clipboards.

The timer allows a ten-second break between calls. I only sold ten subscriptions last month, but they haven’t fired me yet. I need the job. I stay even though I get summoned into the office every week. The poster on the wall in front of me promises a trip to the sunny Bahamas to the year’s highest seller. A woman in a white sarong smiles, her blonde hair lifting behind her like a thousand delicate butterflies.

“I’ll take you,” says Peter, one of the hot-shot salesmen.

I tap my wedding ring. He ignores it, winks, and returns to his spiel. I don’t know how he wrangled the seat next to mine. He’s supposed to be in the back, with the other top guys. His hair’s as long and golden as the model in the vacation photo, and he flicks it at me while he talks.

* * *

At home I help my husband turn over in bed. The nurse we can’t afford just left, and Mark smells like arthritis cream. His muscles ache from the chemo, but I love the tart menthol tang. I press my face into his neck, breathe in.

He grimaces as he tries to stay propped on his side. “How was work today?”

“Lie back down,” I say. “Don’t be a hero.”

“My Super-Suit is at the cleaner’s.” He laughs, a dry sound, a cricket rubbing its legs.

When we first dated he loved to carry me on his back. At the fair. At the park. Around the house. He’s lost so much weight now I can hold him up for the full five minutes it takes to change his shirt. His eyes are still a pretty blue, even though they’re bloodshot. We would’ve had the cutest babies. I smooth his hair and light a joint for us. The pot will knock him out, and I’ll stay up all night beside him reading or watching TV. Sleeping through this time with him is a waste.

* * *

I’m groggy at work the next day and get called into the office. The boss and assistant face me with their arms crossed in front of their chests. We understand your situation they say, and we don’t want to aggravate it, but you need to try harder. How about ten more sales this month? What they don’t know is a line of my coworkers stand in the window behind them, waving their fingers at me in mock criticism. I try not to grin.

I sit at my station, not reading the script. Peter rubs my back a little and I twist my wedding ring around my finger. The day drags, I do not make a sale, and the beach bitch stands above me, tan and happy.

* * *

Mark’s nurse pulls me aside when I walk into the apartment. She explains he’s much worse than when she started. I should consider hospice. It’ll be easier to pay them, she says. There’s a place where I can apply for Medicaid. She loves us, but my last check bounced, and he takes up so much time and her three kids need supplies for school. Her boy is getting older. He wants name brand tennis shoes. A Playstation.

The overhead light’s on in our bedroom, a yellow bulb that casts shadows across Mark’s face, but the glow gives him better color too. Better at least than his usual gray. Mark sits up in bed, pretending to read. I’d bet he and the nurse spent ten minutes posing him like this, for my benefit. A cheap red cape drapes around him, the kind that might come in a child’s Superman costume.

“I asked the nurse to find me one.” He smiles. “I thought you’d like it.”

“I like it.”

“Me too.” He caresses the fabric on his shoulder, mock sexy.

“I’m not putting you in a home,” I say.

His hand drops.

“Oh honey,” he says.

It’s not long before I need to help him lie back down. I fold the red cape in four to set it on Mark’s nightstand. The costume is soft and well-worn. I wonder if it belongs to one of her kids.

* * *

I hear through the grapevine that some of the guys intervened on my behalf and threatened to quit if I’m not treated better. The boss will stop bothering me no matter how bad I suck at this job, and a quart-size mason jar stuffed full of cash sits on my desk, with a ribbon tied around the neck. One of my coworkers scribbled a goofy smiley face on the card they give me, and some other joker drew a dick. After I read the card I lose it. I run into the hallway, and Peter appears with a red bandana to wipe my face.

“We got you,” he says.

He wraps his arms around me, and his biceps flex around my shoulders. I let myself relax into his strong chest. This isn’t all kindness. Peter thinks there’s a place for him, later, when this is over. I should resent him for it, for hovering, but I don’t. His hair brushes my chin and it’s the softest thing I’ve ever felt. Softer even than the child’s costume in my bedroom at home.

Previously published in Passages North, March 2018. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

If you are consulting this guide, you live alone in the house at the end of the lane, and a sphinx has been haunting your overgrown garden. So far you’ve dealt with the sphinx by countering her riddles with Zen koans, or covering your face when you pass so she leaves you alone. You’ve told yourself you don’t mind the sphinx, because she keeps everyone away, even the mail-carrier. But despite your professed misanthropy, you miss the catalogs and junk mail that gave you a connection to the wider world.

The sphinx’s presence in your garden should come as no surprise. Sphinxes make their homes in the cracks between realities, which abound in overgrown gardens like yours. Now that she’s settled in, the only thing to be done is to follow these instructions.

First, go up to the attic and find an old mirror with emotional significance. Your great-aunt’s hand-mirror won’t do, it needs to be the portrait-sized one that belonged to your grandmother. Bring the mirror downstairs. As you dust it off, contemplate your reflection and how much you do or do not resemble your grandmother.

Go to your cupboard and retrieve a china bowl that’s been in your family for generations. Place the bowl before the mirror and sit. Gaze deep into your own reflected eyes and contemplate the ineffable beauty of impermanent things, such as:

• The rings of Saturn, which will be gone in the cosmic blink of an eye.
• The snows of Kilimanjaro and all the glaciers that will vanish within your lifetime.
• A flock of birds you once saw flying in a perfect V into the sunset. You will never see those same birds again, or that same sunset.

Collect all the tears you shed in the china bowl. To make more tears flow, also consider the following:

• All the people you have lost.
• Why you live alone in the house with the overgrown garden at the end of the lane.
• All the people you wish you could forgive, or you wish could forgive you.

When you’re done, go to the kitchen and pack some snacks into a shoulder bag. Add a notebook and a pen or pencil. Make sure to also wrap a dishcloth around your head to obscure your face.

Retrieve the mirror and the bowl of tears and carry them into the garden. The sphinx will appear. As a young sphinx, newly established in such a small garden, she will be about the size of a puma or a lion.

Place the bowl of tears on the ground. The sphinx will lap the tears from the bowl. When she’s finished, show her the mirror. Sphinxes are compulsive creatures, and will react to any human-like face. Photographs won’t work, and an older sphinx would be wise to mirrors, but this sphinx is young and won’t be able to resist asking a riddle. As she sees her reflection ask the riddle, the sphinx will be compelled to answer, and ask again, and answer again, over and over. She will start with something simple like, “What is the nature of a flower?” and work her way up to harder ones, such as, “What lies on the other side of time?”

Write down all of her riddles and their answers. This may take many hours, which is what the snacks are for. Once you’re sure the sphinx has exhausted her supply of riddles, and stands growling and thrashing her tail, dash the china bowl against the mirror, breaking the sphinx’s trance.

Remove the dishcloth from your face. When the sphinx’s feline eyes meet yours, show no fear. She will ask a riddle, but don’t react. Hold her gaze until a frisson of current runs between you, and she seems ready to pounce. Then answer.

She will wait for you to respond with a riddle of your own. Hold her gaze until you feel both your hearts beating in time. Then ask, “What is your name?”

She will tell you.

Ask another riddle: “What is my name?”

She has tasted the tears of your loss and the ineffable beauty of impermanence, and she has traded riddles with you. She will know your name.

Lead the sphinx into your house. She will appear from the interstices of space to curl up with you by the fire, affectionate as a kitten, loyal as a dog, loving as family, a friend for life. She will keep away the spectral rats that live in the walls between realities. She will guard your home from intruders, and invite in those who will bring you joy.

Throw the notebook of riddles into the fire. You won’t be needing it anymore. The ritual is not its result. The riddle is not its answer.

When you have done all this, scratch your sphinx behind the ears. Feel the rumble of her purr. Congratulations: you no longer live alone in the house with the overgrown garden at the end of the lane.

You will die. What happens next is beyond what you can fathom. What will you leave behind? As a writer and historian, you don’t tend to look to the future. Most of your time has been surviving the present and recovering the past. Besides, the future is where death lives. Best get to work making things that might last far longer than you.

But it’s a powerful thing, reading an author’s bibliography. Tom Piccirilli and Joe Lansdale’s work often had a page dedicated to “Other Works by this Author”, and they were inspiring – so many novels, short story collections, volumes of poetry, a non-fiction omnibus, series tie-ins, comic books, plays, and more.

Reading that was was a joy, but not as a completist. These lists did not evoke a drive to read everything and get a badge. It was proof that these writers pulled so much out of their minds, hearts, and guts and turned them into things. And, unlike a lot of pulp writers, these writers had merits beyond their speed of production. You could spend a career making, selling, and getting better as a writer. And when you died, you left behind not just a corpse, but a body of work.

Writing is both a way to live and a way to avoid life, though. You’ve done both. You’ve denied problems you should have faced by turning writing into a substitute for life. But you’ve also found yourself lit and alive by working on a novel or a project. The key, it would seem, is to harness the wisdom and check in with your brooding mind so that you can know the difference.

You are coming up to an anniversary. In September, you will have spent twenty-years dedicated to being a professional writer, the first decade exclusively short stories, then novels, and, on top of that, history and non-fiction of all sorts.

You have yet to tackle a complete bibliography because, well, it doesn’t pay.

But you do know the milestones.

Close to seventy short story sales; five self-published novels, one self-published collection, two major monographs of historical work; two novels from a medium-sized publisher, one novel due from a medium-sized publisher; and one novel being sent out this month while you work on your next project.

If you died tomorrow, your work would have reached thousands of people who otherwise would not know your name otherwise, you would have entered thousands of skulls and etched in their minds a part of your imagination –

Which makes you reflect upon these words.  

“Every man’s heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe their final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others and makes them bleed deeper and something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized by the storytellers, by the loyalty, by the memory of those who honor him and make the running the man did live forever.”

The Ultimate Warrior, 7 April 2014(1959-2014)

You couldn’t have imagined the first twenty. So let us make the next. And the next. Until all that’s left is a body of work from a life well lived.