sparkle + blink 52
TRANSCRIPT
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CONTENTScurated by
Katie Wheeler-Dubin & Evan Karp
featured artist Fuzz Grant
AMY E. GLASENAPP Combustion 1
GINGER BUSWELL The Year Without Water 13
BRIELLE BRILLIANT In the Steam of Things 17 Sickling P. II 21
LISA PIAZZA Fairyland 23
PAUL CORMAN-ROBERTS Our Combustion 27
MELISSA R. SIPIN They Call Us Resilient 33
BROOKE FERGUSON Microclimates 43
SHELBY HINTE Glitch 49
JOHN BABBOTT Marge Narrowly Escapes On Horseback From Carpathian Bandits On Horseback 55
QUIET LIGHTNING IS SPONSORED BY
l a g u n i t a s . c o m
QUIET LIGHTNING
A 501(c)3, the primary objective and purpose of Quiet Lightning is to foster a community based on literary expression and to provide an arena for said expression. QL produces a monthly, submission-based reading series on the first Monday of every month, of which these books (sparkle + blink) are verbatim transcripts.
Formed as a nonprofit in July 2011, the board of QL is currently:
Evan Karp founder + president
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evan@ quiet l ightning .org
1
A M Y E . G A A S E N A P P
COMBUSTION
Sometime between getting out of bed and making coffee, Cleo’s brain started to overheat. First there was the sound of a high whistle, which could have been the tea kettle in the next apartment. Then it was unbearably hot in the kitchen, worse than in the Bikram studio. She grabbed her coffee, opened a window, and went into the living room, where Cassie was reading the Sunday Times. This was their most treasured time; there was still an hour and a half before they’d have to make up their minds about the ten o’clock rappelling class at the climbing gym. But after a few uneasy minutes, during which no one had bothered to shut off the whistling kettle, Cleo’s eyelids started to droop, and steam rose from her slick black hair.
“Oww,” she said. “My head.” Cassie’s eyes were glued to the front page of the Business section. Cleo dropped the book reviews onto the coffee table.
“Your head always hurts when you read the book reviews. What is it this time? Historical fiction disguised as a presidential autobiography?”
“Another book about Freud’s influence on the size and shape of baguettes.”
2
“Ohh,” Cassie replied. She looked up finally and caught sight of her girlfriend’s smoking scalp. She thought about saying something, but Cleo didn’t like it when she pointed out things that could be construed as flaws.
They continued reading. Cleo’s face sizzled with sweat, the beads popping off her skin like grease in a pan, and at one point she started to moan. Cassie sighed. Was Cleo really doing this right now? Why didn’t she just go lie down? Unable to focus on the latest mortgage banking scandal, she skipped ahead to the Markets Overview and ran her cold foot over Cleo’s damp, stubbly shin. She wasn’t sure what to do or say, so she waited. Outside, an enormous, dark cloud moved over the sun.
“Are you okay?” Cassie asked finally, scrutinizing her reddening girlfriend. Pretty tendrils of smoke drifted from Cleo’s finely drawn nostrils.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes round and globby.
“Nothing. Just asking.”
They went back to reading. Smoke swirled beneath the light fixture. The couch was getting really warm, and Cassie moved a few inches away from Cleo, whose hands were shaking so badly she could hardly hold up the Week in Review. Vladimir Putin did a little scowly dance as the corner of the paper dipped into Cleo’s coffee cup, which was still full to the brim. She kept the paper aloft, even though her eyes were
Amy E. GlAsEnApp 3
closed. Steam escaped her parted lips.
“How’s the article?” Cassie asked.
“What article?”
“The one you’ve been reading?”
“I’ve just been holding it here.”
“What for?”
“I don’t really know.”
A dog barked outside, which made their dog, Henry, bark, and then a few other neighborhood mutts joined in the ruckus. Cleo, who usually yelled at Henry to shut up, rolled up in a ball on the couch and covered herself with newspaper. The cloud blocking the sun moved on, and then another bigger, darker one came.
Cassie went into the kitchen to get Cleo some water. When she came back, she tried to tilt the water into her mouth, but it kept spilling all over the sofa and creating more steam. When Cleo sat up, there was a circular burn mark on the plush cushion. The living room smelled like the scene of a car crash. Cassie felt Cleo’s head, and it was like touching a light bulb that had been on for a while. She put the air conditioner on, even though it was January, and Cleo sipped the water and sighed.
“We’ve got to get you to the doctor, I think,” Cassie said, aware that Cleo hated doctors almost as much as she hated shrinks. “I think maybe you have a fever.”
4
“No way. Too expensive.”
“We’ll go to county.”
“And wait fifty years to see someone who’s just going to give me aspirin anyway?”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah.”
Cleo lay back down, and Cassie flinched, because the sofa had been really expensive at Ikea, and they’d only bought it a few months ago on credit.
They decided to skip the climbing gym and instead flipped on the TV. As they waited for whatever was about to be on, they half-watched commercials announcing the arrivals of several FDA-approved medications with ridiculous sounding names, like Astroglucon and Xaniplenda, all of which treated
“minor discomforts” and listed side effects such as uncontrollable vomiting, foaming at the mouth, and semi-permanent loss of eyesight.
Cleo belched white ash all over the throw blanket and moaned. Her neck seized, and now she lay with her shoulders pressed to her ears. “I bet all that shit’s in the water by now,” she said, staring at the screen.
“All those medications that cause loose stools and vertigo.”
The commercials ended and the Sunday morning bald guy, they could never remember his name, was introducing his next guest, Hillary Clinton. Cassie
Amy E. GlAsEnApp 5
enjoyed left-leaning political rhetoric as much as any liberal San Franciscan, and although she hadn’t rooted for her in 2008, she was thrilled at the prospect of a Hillary 2016 bumper sticker to put over the old one. But wait, who was this guy? The bald guy was interviewing a spokesman for Hillary Clinton. It was not a good day for the network. Just as the spokesman was unveiling Clinton’s game plan for remaining out of the public eye until she decided whether or not to run, Cassie picked up the remote. “Lame.”
Cleo reached over and grabbed her wrist. “Wait. Wait.”
“What?”
“I want to see this.”
“Um, okay.”
Cassie put the remote down and let Cleo watch the rest of the interview. She still simmered, but now with interest, nodding and hmming to herself.
“You know,” Cleo said during the commercial break, “I used to think about going to law school. Doing some high-profile stuff and then running for congress. Then becoming president. And from that position of power, just getting all the people together, you know, rallying them, to abolish government altogether.”
“Like, staging a revolution from the inside? Hmm. I didn’t know you ever wanted to do stuff like that.”
Cleo was a yoga instructor. She had majored in Performing Arts in college.
6
Cassie turned back to the screen, trying to figure out what the bald guy and the Clinton spokesman were saying that suddenly made so much sense to her girlfriend of two years, who had never before had any interest in participating in, much less overthrowing, government. But now a happy couple frolicked through a field of daisies, no longer dealing with the discomfort and embarrassment of halitosis.
“It’s like, be the change you want to see,” Cleo was saying, “and stupid us, we all thought we could just vote for this youngish, handsome black guy and something different would happen. And maybe now I’m starting to see through all that. I mean, why even vote? Everything’s broken.”
“I suppose. Yeah.”
“And stuff like yoga and dance, all of that just feeds complacency,” Cleo went on, her eyes widening. “Like here, here’s a little bit of relaxation, a way to be in your body rather than in your head, because when you actually bother to think, you can see everything’s fucked up. Right now, in child’s pose, you don’t have to think about it. Just breathe in, breathe out.” Cleo waved her hands in the air, a spasmodic, semi-conscious symphony conductor, and a little flame burst out of one of her eyelashes. It fizzled out before it reached the follicle.
“People don’t want to think about that stuff all the time,” Cassie pointed out. “They’d go crazy.”
“They should go crazy.”
Amy E. GlAsEnApp 7
“Okay,” Cassie said, shrugging. “But I think maybe you’re brain’s shorting out.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t mean it like that. I mean, I think your brain is actually going through some sort of chemical reaction. I mean, look.” Cassie pointed to the dense cloud overhead.
“Is that why it’s so hot in here?” Cleo asked, looking alarmed.
“That’s my guess.”
“Have you turned on the dehumidifier?”
“If you’d just let me take you to the doctor.”
Cleo grabbed bits and pieces of different newspaper sections and resumed covering herself with them. They billowed and smoked but did not catch fire.
Cassie reached over Cleo’s head and wrenched open the paint-stuck window, and when she sat down again, the front of her sweatshirt was charred. The fibers were black and crispy, and slightly sticky. Some of Cleo’s hair was attached.
“That’s it,” Cassie said, standing. “If you won’t let me take you to urgent care, I’m calling my brother.”
Jordan arrived ten minutes later in full volunteer fireman regalia. “Who Kentucky fried a corpse in here?” he said, grimacing through the mask. He didn’t say it in front of Cleo, for which Cassie was grateful.
8
“She’s in there,” Cassie said, pointing. “I’m worried about her. She said she wanted to go to law school, and be president?”
“Wow. Cleo did? Shit. When did this start?”
“An hour ago? I don’t know.”
“Jesus,” he said, peering into the living room. “Her head looks like a baked potato.”
Cassie stared out the kitchen window. She was trying hard not to cry. “Well, can you do anything? I mean, it’s probably just the flu, but…”
Jordan leaned against the table and scratched his chin. “Could be. There’s a gnarly one going around.”
“I’ve never seen one quite like this,” she said, weaving her fingers together.
“Have you tried holding her head underwater?” Jordan asked.
Cassie gulped.
“Okay, go fill the tub. Then come back and help me get her in there.”
The rain pounded on the clogged gutters, and the stray tabby cat howled beneath the back porch.
“I’m trusting you,” Cassie said, eyeing him.
Cleo was humming when Cassie walked by. Her eyes were closed again, and she looked peaceful. The cushion beneath her head was scorched to the seams.
Amy E. GlAsEnApp 9
When the tub was finally full, Jordan cinched his arm around Cleo’s waist, and Cassie took Cleo’s arm and put it over her shoulder. As they carried her, her head bobbed on her neck like a buoy lost at sea. She was humming the tune of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” It was more depressing than anything Cassie could imagine.
“You know, I think I’ve seen this once before,” Jordan said as they lowered her onto the bathmat.
“Yeah? What was the deal?”
“Well, I hate to say this, but—” he turned away from Cleo and whispered, “spontaneous combustion. It’s a real thing, you know. But the good news is a lot of times the person doesn’t actually explode.”
“What’s it caused by?” Cassie asked, intrigued.
“Stress, for one.”
“Cleo is always under a lot of stress at work.”
“Isn’t she a yoga instructor?”
Cassie shrugged. “What else causes it?”
Jordan thought for a second. “Diet,” he added.
“She has been eating a lot of tuna lately.”
“And, um, lack of something.” He snapped his fingers. “Some vitamin. B? D?”
“Hmm. I’ll have to look into that,” Cassie mumbled.
When they peered into the still water, their
10
reflections were so similar it startled them. Curly black hair and dark eyes from their mother, strong chins from their father, big pores from Grandma. Their foreheads large, wondering.
They lifted Cleo by the armpits and positioned her over the rim of the tub. Jordan counted to three, and they pushed her burning head down into the cold water. She didn’t struggle. A few seconds passed, and then huge bubbles rose to the surface. Cassie could feel blisters forming on her palms where they came in contact with her girlfriend’s scalp. The cold water turned lukewarm, then hot. In seconds, the bathroom was a wet sauna, not unlike the one at the climbing gym.
Once the bubbles started to diminish, they let Cleo up. Strands of black hair stuck to her face. Cassie ran to the sink and poured cold water on her hands. Jordan thanked God for his fire hose calluses.
“Shit,” Cleo said, blinking. “I just had the craziest dream.”
They couldn’t tell if her head was still smoking, what with all the steam, so they carried Cleo into the hallway and set her down in the faux-leather armchair. For a while, she was still red and baked-looking, but the smoke was gone. Cassie patted her brother on the back, but Jordan wasn’t convinced.
“What’s four times four?” he asked her.
“Uhh.”
Amy E. GlAsEnApp 11
“State capital?”
“Sacramento?”
“Political leanings?”
Cleo shook her head as if to clear it and grabbed the arms of the chair. “What?”
Cassie clapped her hands.
Later that night, after they treated Jordan to a home-cooked vegetarian meal, Cleo took some muscle relaxers and fell asleep almost instantly. Cassie treasured the whinnying sound that came out when her girlfriend exhaled. Her head was still a little deflated-looking, but she was sure it would fill back out after a good night’s sleep. The pillow beneath her remained cool and clean.
In the semi-darkness, Cleo didn’t stir, not even when the fire engine sirens blared outside. Cassie wiped sweat from her brow and felt heat radiate through her own body. She sat watching her girlfriend’s chest rise and fall as blue and red lights flashed wildly behind the still, white curtain.
13
G I N G E R B U S W E A ATHE YEAR WITHOUT WATER
We drank milk, and bathed in dried lavender. We washed our dishes with sand and hung our laundry in the sere air. At lunch we drank apple juice and ate strips of jerked beef and venison. We drew our portraits on the sidewalk in pastel chalk.
We whitewashed the fence, and hung posters in the streets with wheat paste. We snacked on raisins and prunes. We tanned leather, bound books, or split wood. We joined knitting groups, sewed quilts, and wove nets to catch armadillos. We collected cobwebs and won gold ribbons at the county fair. We forged cast iron pans and blown glass lanterns. We refilled our inkwells. We struck oil.
On Sundays we swept all the dust under the rug, then took our sacraments. We washed down our crackers with wine, and stuffed ourselves with dry salami and cheese. We became apiarists and wore beehive hairdos. We licked peanut butter and honey from our spoons. We made rubber band pistols and flicked carnelian tipped matchsticks at each other. We flew paper airplanes on the siroccos. We took our siestas. We burned incense at vespers.
14
At dusk we smoked pipe tobacco or rolled cigarettes on the porch. We stuck cotton balls in our ears and refereed pillow fights. We gave each other henna tattoos and braided cornhusk dolls. We put on seer-sucker suits and twirled parasols. When it got dark we put on records, and cleaned lint from the needle. We built midnight bonfires and toasted marshmal-lows, then took up fire dancing with hula hoops. We laid off all the weathermen. We spontaneously combusted.
We fried yucca and salted jicama. We stuck out our tongues like lizards sniffing the breeze. We grew milkweed for caterpillars and prayed for monarch butterflies. If we listened we could hear the cicadas munching on thistles. We erected ant farms and left our angels in the dirt. We held cricket fights, picked winners and placed bets. We cooked popcorn and shared it with spectators at meteor showers. We lit candles and waited for moths. We shimmered in the mirage.
We trained crocodiles to balance coconuts on their noses. We wrangled rattlesnakes and made tumble-weed wreaths with their sloughed skins. We played hopscotch and cast our shadows on the blacktop. We tied balloons to our wrists, then untied them and watched them disappear. We played didgeridoos and made rainsticks out of cactus and beans. We whirled like dervishes.
GinGEr BuswEll 15
One night we heard lightning strike the desiccated hills and spark dormant seeds. After the fire, we spread out our quilts and had picnics and watched wildflowers bloom under the charred manzanita.
We cried when it rained.
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B R I E A A E B R I A A I A N TIN THE STEAM OF THINGS
perhapsin the steami’ll be a dropletthe first oneof the rainthe first onethat’s notred.
perhapsin the steami’ll be a long long braid who talks only in blueberry pie and people willlike me bestgrey.
perhapsin the steami’ll eat likea bird
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and everyone will watch because they prefer shadows to people shadowsto shade.
perhapsin the steami’ll bandagemy legs causethey’ll turnto branchescolorless kindlingbranchesi’ll smoothout a vein wiped too cleanon the wayto vermont.
perhapsin the steami will sound like a boywho losthis bloodhound and i’ll livein a house built for rabbitsto be killed
BriEllE BrilliAnt 19
in the backyard.
and most definitelyperhapsin the steami will eat these rabbitsin the chairnext to the tablein the kitchenand think about fucking or pick-pocketing or potato peeling
and i’ll have no objectsto my nameonly piecesof peopleshair and mosquitobites and allmy freckleswill be gone
and i will leavemy backpack on the side of the highwayso only squirrels
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can find meand the carswill go toofast too fastto pick me up
and the day will be a big skyalways a big skyon days called today.
in the steam no one slows down.
i’m pretty enoughto be a passengerbut it’s some usualshit-eating-loveand i’m just anothernewspaper photoof a girl
looking softin the steam of things.
BriEllE BrilliAnt 21
SICKLING P. II
he don’t speak,this puddle.
no gentle manbobby vin teal n cashmere,splish splash.
so i sit,turn the heating on,watch the airturn to afternoon.
in the morninghe watches mewake up and countfreckles seven, eight, seven.
i ask himto grow a longbrown beardso i can watch itfloat in the water like a dead animal.
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he don’t speak.instead he lives in the storm drain,occasionallycomes outholding a black mugand sayssweetie?
you’resteaming.
23
A I S A P I A L L A
FAIRYLAND
It is easier to disappear than to seethe. Seething requires heat, requires notice. To disappear is delicate. Imaginary. Subtle, slow, soundless. It can take years. It is not like a burst of flame—the red-orange of fire—blazing for all to see. There is no smoke or glare—no demand for witness, for action. Disap-pearing requires little discipline. For me it happened mostly by accident. A finger first, the pinkie fading from the tip, then the oval mole on my forearm followed by the flap of my right earlobe. The night I ducked into the whale’s mouth I was little more than half-there.
It was a time for celebration: sixty years of Fairyland, the gated world in miniature surrounded by the raspy shores of Lake Merritt. Eariler, Mona and I entered through strings of lights, festive bands of color, sur-rounded by a happy crowd humming with the gush of young mothers showing their babies to the world and the world to their babies. Mine was a different business. A trade-off, an hour break, a heart-stopping transfer of child from mother to father. This was our new agreement: Paul would take Mona for an hour or two at a time. She was ten months, still nursing, still tied to me in a physical, tangible way
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I could use as proof of her need (and mine).
She curdled in his arms and I tugged myself away to the whale, which welcomed me with its round mouth, wide open—dank with the stale air of algae and dust, still water, old and forgotten. I waited, crouched in the dark belly feeling my lungs evaporate, one breath at a time. I could only hold and hold her empty form, imagining Mona to be safer than I ever was with Paul—but this, too, is part of the disappearance. Partial seeing is a form of omission that attaches itself so that if you give up one thing, you end up giving another. Eventually all that remains is a sliver of nothing new and by then you, too, are going
going
gone.
Mona will know soon enough.
She will ask for the whole story. The real one: the deep hole, the steep drop. The split and mend, the mend and split. The heavy bags, the empty rooms, the ring I cannot stand to wear. She will ask about a way forward, a way back. And she will listen (attentive as stone) to the silence between sentences—waiting for a space to enter.
There is only so much I can say.
lisA piAzzA 25
Words, too, disappear when you do. I have forgotten some of the most important already. As easy as an eyeball, there goes the way to say: see, sight—when the rhymes latch on it gets worse. There goes: fight, fright, ignite, relight, sleep tight… don’t let the bed bugs bite.
At the bottom of the whale was an empty fish tank where a mechanical crocodile sat, gurgling brown bubbles. It is the least of what Fairyland has to offer. This place—a world colored in cracked pastel, beckons with rickety rides and wheels that grind, clanging on, screeching off. Everywhere the wavering tune of a music box ruined in the rain. Here there are wishes to make, wells for pennies, boats to pirate, houses with windows that open and close, painted flowers always in bloom. Children, strapped onto wilting ponies, wave as they circle the merry-go-round, surprised every time to find their parents there. Of course these horses offer no pro-gression, no diminishment of mothers. Only a careful following—a hovering, an absorption of revolving animation: we light like a strobe each time our child comes around.
Parenthood is part lock, part key. Tight squeeze. Small arms around a weary neck, a small head bending, one, two, three nods away from sleep. It is a tenderness unnamable; it is what keeps me real, even as I fade. I suppose every mother strives to keep her child from sinking into the quicksand of disap-
26
pointment—I am no different. But even more, I fear Mona’s actual, eventual, disappearance; little by little, feet first, full belly, up to her chin in understanding. If I tell her to hold out a hand, every time, will she reach for me? Will she know to grasp the air—bone white as the summer fog—and find that 1 am still there?
If I could burst into flames, maybe I would. If only to give Mona a sign. Something to remember me by. A brightness. A light. An offering. An answer.
When it was time, I left the damp den of the whale—walking on crooked feet, missing an ankle on one leg and a knee on the other, my spine askew. I looked for Paul by the dragon, our meeting spot. He was anxious, worried, angry, as usual. Mona swung easily back to me. Her small hand caught on a strand of my hair and she held on, tugging an honest reminder to stay. A crowd of kids rushed by and we twirled out of the way, finding ourselves face to face with the long leather slit of the dragon’s tongue. I pulled it, half expecting a charging flame, a momentous eruption intent on burning us both. Instead, a whole troupe of thin, glittery bubbles drifted out, gliding in a silent spiral, floating high and away on an invisible stream.
27
P A U A C O R M A N P R O B E R T SOUR COMBUSTION
Part I: Your Combustion
You never see fire like you see it in the eyes of your family, when the wilderness of their desire springs free and consumes them in the most innocuous of moments; behind the wheel of the mini-van, sparking awake after an impromptu nap on the laundry still not folded and put away, during the human interest news segment that airs in between the weather and sports, or during Sunday morning coffee and web-surfing, brought on by nothing more than the sublime juxtaposition of grainy police tape images and a “for sale” sign mixed with the sound of gently fading rain and you are never in more danger than when your senses are so seduced and suspended and surrounded by the company of those you most love in this life.
Part II: My Combustion
We are never more imprinted than in those moments not of our choosing. My kingdom of damage is a burned out, three story grotto over-looking the Spokane River Valley, visions of a
28
hand over cash & carry haunted house operation dancing through my uncle’s dilated pupils as he drives up the rutted road, letting us all out at the spectacle of gothic ruins.
The first floor is wild and strewn, as if the rain storm that had just passed on this gray, April 1977 day had been looking for something inside here.
On the second floor, halfway down the hall from the blackened stairwell, my beautiful honey haired cousin Julie, a precocious eleven years old and two years older than me to the day teaches, pulls me into one of the ravaged bedrooms and convinces me to let her teach me how to French kiss slowly. The bible tells us this is wrong, but I love that she wants us to pull our pants down and feel each other’s sensitive parts nuzzle against each other while our tongues wrestle madly. Her brother James catches us, puts his hands over his mouth and runs out. We pull up our pants and walk out wondering how much trouble we are in.
The rain returns and everyone starts back to my uncle’s van but my mother is missing and I begin to feel that hollow burn. I call out her name on the first floor, to no avail. I scream out her name on the second floor, wondering if she saw my cousin and I being naughty, and after fearfully checking each ominous room on the second floor, I ascend to third floor trembling with the possibility that she has left
pAul CormAn-roBErts 29
me forever. I can hear my family outside near the van calling her name.
“JO ELLEN!”
I call out “MOM!” on the third floor and still get no answer. I check each room up here, where the center portion of the roof is gone and charred beams and shingles resemble the mouth of a dragon whose teeth have been smashed by its own tail, the rainfall inten-sifying and soaking me through the gaping maw.
In the last room on the floor, I finally find her staring at the graffiti on the wall.
“Mom.”
She doesn’t respond, just keeps staring at the wall.
I run up to her.
“MOM!”
She finally speaks:
“Devil worshippers lived here.”
I look to the wall to see if I can see what she refuses to take her eyes off of, but I see no obvious signs of evil. I don’t understand the images and words spray painted on the ruined, ashen walls. I look back at her,
30
rainwater dripping down her cheeks.
“Young women died here,” she says.
I tug at her arm.
“Mom, we have to go. We’re leaving now. We need to leave now mom, okay? Please?”
She turns and starts to come with my pull, and when we get to the stairs there is James waiting, and I wonder if he is going to say anything when suddenly the stair beneath his right foot gives way and he screams as he starts to plunge down but he is able to grab onto a barely stable stair rail still there, and with the hand that is not tugging my mother, I’m able to help pull him out of the hole. He then helps me to carefully step over this hazard, and then in turn helps me help my mom across it. We continue gingerly down, James and I afraid that any one of the structurally compromised steps could send us tumbling down to the soggy embers below.
But this doesn’t happen, and we make it back to the van with the rest of my cousins imploring us “come on! Hurry up!” and my uncle is cracking open a fresh can of Coors before getting ready to hit the road, an enormous, self satisfied grin on his features. James gives me a look, and I know he isn’t going to say a word, and I love him forever for this, even when he becomes a woman years later, driving a cab in
pAul CormAn-roBErts 31
Bremerton and strung out on meth.
Part III: Our Combustion
Everything that ever goes wrong between you and I was caused by things that happened to us before we even knew each other.
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M E A I S S A R . S I P I N
THEY CALL USRESILIENT
We prayed. We huddled in a basement when the winds fell and lit candles and signed the cross as we gave thanks to the statue of Holy Mary. She is a small statue. She is all we have left. She has been in our lives for 400 years. She is draped in an olive robe and her eyes are blue like the raging mouth of the sea. We prayed to our Holy Mary. We crowded the basement. There were bodies spilling out, we couldn’t all fit, and some took refuge in the scattered Jeepneys along the road, and when the trees and metal gates bent, so did they. The waters came and it took their bodies from the colorful jeeps. The sea swallowed our loved ones with the broken windows and collapsed doors and the portraits of our fathers and mothers and the rice cookers and the pots and pans. But we prayed. When the sun broke the clouds and we stood on the wet grounds with every house crushed under the weight of our hopes, we prayed. We prayed, Lord, we prayed. We took our silences and our constant smiles and hugged our neighbors who still had hands and feet to stand on and we walked the ten miles and heard the planes above and we prayed. This was our prayer, Lord. This was how we prayed.
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Holy Mary heard our crosses, bore the weight of our silence. Hawak kamay. We held hands when the winds fell, when the land emptied our bellies, when the raging sea took every house and man and child and woman with her. We prayed, Lord, we prayed:
We can smell the dead.We can smell the dead crying, Lord.We can smell the dead scurrying for food.We can smell the dead lying, Lord.Our resilience, isn’t it the wind calling?Take our hope, Lord, we will eat it.Eat till our guts and loins are full:Kumain tayo, kainin natin ito.Tayo tayo tayo.We can smell the dead living, Lord.We can smell the dead alive.We can smell the dead eating, Lord.Stand before our broken houses.Raise your fists as the sun howls.Wash our feet, abashed, wash the sounds.And hear us, now, as we pray.
* * *
In the morning, we awoke to the sun and the smell of rotting flesh. In the morning, we awoke to collapsed houses. In the morning, we awoke to missing children, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. In the morning, we crawled from the pit of the earth and saw hills covered with mounds of broken buildings
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and crashed cars and dead bodies. In the morning, we awoke, our bellies hungry, our wills scattered. In the morning, we awoke and began to walk.
We walked ten miles to the airport after the winds fell and the storms bent metal gates and 10,000 went missing. We walked ten miles and waited eight long hours in a crowded room spilling with bodies. We walked ten miles and the roads were paved with bodies. We walked ten miles and the churches were filled with bodies. We walked ten miles and we prayed for two days in a basement when Yolanda swelled and screamed, and in her loudness, 10,000 bodies went missing, 10,000 bodies we saw lying in the dirt and the debris, 10,000 bodies in a broken chapel, 10,000 bodies for empty coffins, 10,000 bodies under the bamboo and wood and brick and bent metal, and did you know? We walked the island of death and the trees uprooted themselves and the sun came to brazen the wetness and it was ten miles to the airport and eight long hours awaiting a military plane crowded with supplies and food and blankets and pills and bandages and cans of packaged meats and bags of rice and all the objects we needed but we call to you, to ask you this, we must ask you this: What can erase the image of bodies lining the streets, the trees and buildings and lampposts and wooden beams hiding their limbs, separating their hands and feet and heads, the empty coffins awaiting their sleep, tell us how to forget the 10,000 bodies that crowd our minds?
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We walk the island of death and we walk the roads paved with the smell of flesh.
But when we see the young woman birthing a girl in the crowded airport, we cry. We cheer when the babe cries. We hear the military planes roaring above, bringing us more things to eat: we eat our hope. We move as the earth watches, as the journalists come, as they ask us if we are hungry, as the cameras flash, as the global reports claim we are looting and stealing and so, we turn away and we walk. We walk and walk and walk and walk. We remember without stopping, without feeling the pain surging our feet, our lungs, the head, the heart.
We walk, one leg lifting, we walk, one arm swaying, we walk, one breath inhaling, we walk. We walk with 10,000 bodies. We walk more than ten miles. We walk longer than eight hours. We walk till the metal gates unbend. Till the trees re-root. Till the coffins are filled. Till the houses are rebuilt. Till the roads are paved with our sweat.
Our will walks us through the island of death, and with our hands, we await the next day and the next, ready to build.
* * *
We are ready to build. We are ready to build because there is nothing else. We are ready to build but there are no supplies. We are ready to build but there is
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no food. We are ready to build and it is the fifth day since the winds fell and still, we have no food. We have no buri mats to sleep on, no clean water, no electricity, no power, no medical supplies, no pots or pans to cook rice in, no man or government person with his uniform in charge, and around us, the earth is flattened: there are collapsed houses, broken bamboo stilts, crushed cars, bent metal, shattered glass, splintered wood, a sea of black body bags, a sea of long lines and the waiting. There is the stadium with the crumpled government cars wedged into fence posts, a twisted chain link fence. We walk with makeshift masks, desperately trying to escape the smell.
We can only walk. We walk. There is nothing else. The lucky ones have motorcycles. The lucky ones stole bikes. The lucky ones climb into government cars. We, we walk. We walk. We are hungry. We band together, we eye the others. We walk. We loot. We steal. We walk. We follow the crowd. We walk three hours to a warehouse with a shattered roof. We climb the broken wall, up the roof and down to the building filled with thieves. We hope for rice, but there is more: cans of sardines, bottles of water, blankets. We steal. We loot. We take whatever our hands can carry, whatever our children can bear. We take, we steal, we are hungry. We are women. We are men. We steal metal guns. We hold onto metal guns. We run. We sleep in huddles. We stand guard. Take turns watching. Waiting. Till the night falls and the
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earth is filled with the air of flesh. We stand still. Guns pointed. Guns ready. We walk.
In the morning, we see the white man coming with his cameras. We see him treading with us, asking our folk if they are hungry, where their houses stood, where their children’s and husbands’ and wives’ bodies lay. We watch the white man cry. We watch him answer the camera and say:
Can you imagine the strength it takes living in a shack, to be sleeping on the streets next to the body of your dead children?
We look at the white man eyeing the camera, glancing left and right, collapsing his face into his hands, his khaki slacks perfectly clean, unspoiled, his grey hair slicked back, his eyes the bluest, like the raging sea.
Can you imagine that strength? I can’t.
He turns to us, he looks at us, and he says:
And I’ve seen that strength day in and day out here, and we honor them in every broadcast that we do.
We look back, we hold hands, hawak kamay, we walk to this white man and we grasp his shoulders and we ask him: don’t you know? Don’t you know? Don’t you know?
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We carry our statue of Holy Mary, we hold her close, we touch the rough marble and kiss her olive robe, and we ask the earth and the television screens and we sit on our stolen buri mats and we say:
She is all we have left.
We hold hands, hawak kamay, we pray. We pray, Lord, we pray. We want to tell the white man and his cameras: didn’t you know?
We are used to typhoons. We grow with typhoons. We have two seasons: the wet and the dry. Typhoons ravage our land, our islands, and more than 20 whip through our towns in a year. We could smell the rain when it comes. We knew when the moon had a ring around it, there would be rain. The winds would fall. We knew from the chattering of the birds. We knew from the cockroach hordes marching from our cupboards and up our walls. We knew from the scurrying of ants outside our porches. We knew from the roosters and their stilled wings and their suspended cries that the rain was coming. We could tell the strength of the storms from the color of the clouds, from the grey streaking across the sky, from the thickness and darkness of the blankets above us. The cities would blare signals of these predictions. A siren would blow when the typhoon was encroach-ing. The first signal meant rain and some wind, but we still went to school. The second signal meant stronger rain and wind, and we were excused from
40
school. But the radio lines still worked, the cinemas were still open, the telephone lines and electricity still buzzed. When the third and fourth signal blew, we stayed indoors and hid in our basements. The winds would fall and the rain would plow through our streets, flooding the passageways—the branches would break, the trees would uproot, the metal gates would bend, the corrugated metal roofing would collapse. We huddled in our basements with canned goods, water, candles, matches, and the world outside would wait, the electricity and telephone lines would cease, and don’t you know, dear white man, we knew how to wait. We waited. We would wait for the sun to break the clouds and brazen the wet grounds and in the morning, we awoke to a city still standing.
What was this storm, dear white man? Was it the fifth siren, the sixth, the seventh? The city we knew: it’s gone. Everything: it’s gone. Where is our strength? Our resilience? Where is our brokenness? Where is our food? Where are our politicians and their wives on broadcasts, telling you, white man, that you’re wrong: that we’re not starving? Where is our hope? Where are our voices? Did the wind ravage them too?
We pray our Hail Mary’s. We pray Our Father. We pray and we smile and we hug those who are left. We walk and we scavenge and we bury our dead, even our children. We walk and we loot and we steal and, Lord, we have to eat. We walk and we steal
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a treadmill because maybe we can sell it for food, because maybe later, our still breathing child can say we may have nothing left but this treadmill, but this treadmill is all we have left. We walk and we walk and we laugh and we cry and we keep walking until the sun continues to dry up the land.
We laugh. We find a hoop beneath our broken houses and we prop it up with broken wood beams and rusty nails as if it were our treasure. We play basketball among the ruins of our lost town. A crowd gathers on Juan Luna Street. We play, pushing each other aside, grabbing at our arms, shooting the orange, grimy ball into the metal ring. We laugh. We hold each other’s hands and we huddle on this street where our families once stood and we share stories of loss: we grieve. We laugh at what we’ve lost, we joke, if only briefly, we list them, we itemize and inventory the objects, the relations, the people, our loved ones, our dear ones, and cry. We laugh. We remember. We eat our silence. This is all we have left.
You call us resilient.
We say to you, dear television sets, dear journalists, dear broadcasters, dear outside world that paints us like brown savages, that must ask us: why?
This is nothing new. Bahala na, sir: whatever happens, leave it to God. It is why we pray. It is why we leave. It is why we stay. Our collective blood seeps deeper
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into the islands’ rivers, the underwater caves, the mountains, the trees, the dirt of our land, our kapwa of will, of death, of moving on.
It is why we board a crowded U.S. Air Force C-17 along with 500 others, all displaced, all who have lost everything too; it is why we stand by babies and pregnant women and men with dolls who kiss the stuffed animal-like wings over and over, remnants of a daughter now gone. It is why when an American crewmember holds her iPhone to the aircraft’s speaker, playing Earth, Wind & Fire, a song we do know, a song we play on the karaoke, that we break out into dance and song. We sing: Do you remember? We dance: While chasing the clouds away. We twirl: Our hearts were ringing. We sway: In the key that our souls were singing. We laugh: As we danced the night, Remember. We cry, as the plane nears Manila, far away from the carnage, our home: How the stars stole the night away.
They call us resilient. And dear sir, yes, we are: this is what we always will have.
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B R O O B E F E R G U S O N
MICROCLIMATES
I am walking my dog on Geary Street, along the narrow cut of San Francisco called the Tenderloin. Our nightly strolls average 45 minutes to an hour; Humbert makes wide, snuffling sweeps of the sidewalk, hoping to detect blades of grass, a rich pile of soil, something natural. Experience should tell him no, he will not find those things here, and ought to just hunch up over one the steel doors of a sidewalk cellar (his second favorite poop spot, something about the texture I think) and call it a night. But we trudge on, the streetlights washing his white fur yellow. We give a wide berth to the soot-darkened shoes and singed piles of clothes we pass.
Humbert stops outside of a bar. It’s one of the newer spots with a fireplace and leather couches, one of the businesses that exist on the TenderNob (the cute name rental agencies came up with for the blocks that run interference between one of San Francisco’s most notorious neighborhoods and one of its wealthiest) so that young folks can adventure there for a drink without having to experience anything too scary. Humbert sniffs at a dark spot on the concrete.
“Excuse me,” two men are standing near the curb,
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cigarettes between their knuckles. The shorter one is looking into traffic with his hands in his pockets, grinning, while the other steps toward me. He’s wear- ing a grey North Face jacket and has bushy eyebrows.
I say nothing and watch as Humbert presses his black nose to the ground, inhaling deeply.
“My friend and I were talking,” the man continues. “We were saying that no one lives here unless they’re a student, a drug addict, or a hooker.”
I flick my eyes toward them. The short guy is sniggering and shaking his head.
“So… which one are you?”
I pull on Humbert’s leash but he’s rounded his body to do his business. He glares at me over his shoulder, not pleased by the disruption. I look back at the man, who is waiting for my answer.
“No,” I say. “I just live here.” I frown and rub my fing- ers together. There’s a smoky layer of grit on my skin. It comes through the windows of our apartment when we leave the windows open, blackening the sills and the back of the couch. It’s been noticeably heavier in the last few weeks. In the last few weeks three build-ings in the neighborhood have been gutted by fire.
“Oh,” he says, and he frowns, too. I pull a purple poop
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bag from my pocket and stoop to pick up Humbert’s mess. He’s studying the man with his dark button eyes, shaggy tail giving a hopeful wag.
“Well, maybe you can tell me what’s up with the clothes, then?”
“What?” I look down at what I’m wearing: jeans and a sweater and converse sneakers.
“The piles of clothes everywhere,” he gestures with his cigarette, toward a crumpled lump of corduroy pants and a button-down shirt. “What’s the deal?”
“Oh…” I nod my head slowly, knotting the poop bag, thinking about how I’m going to respond. “Well, you know, there’s all these micro-hoods.”
“Micro-wha?” He glances at his friend, who is now looking at his phone.
“Microhoods,” I say. “Tiny neighborhoods. With microclimates. Because of where we’re situated, with the bay and the ocean on either side, plus the hills. It makes these little climates. Like when you cross the street and suddenly need to put on your jacket, and then on the next block you’re hot again.”
“Oookay… And that has what to do with the clothes?” His friend has finally walked over to join him. He looks ready to leave. They both have gelled hair.
46
“Well, it’s just my idea, I guess. That there’s a reaction with the climate. That’s why it happens more here than in other neighborhoods.”
“What happens?”
“Spontaneous combustion,” I say. “Some people, they come into contact with the climate here, and they start to smoke. And if they don’t do anything about it, they go right up in flames. Sometimes it doesn’t even scorch the ground. All the clothes… It almost looks like all these people got Raptured, like God plucked up the ones he wanted to save.” I laugh. “But that’s not it. They just burn up. It happens in compost piles sometimes. Piles of shit, too,” I say. Now I’m looking right at him, and now I’m smiling, and now his bushy eyebrows are knitting together.
“Riiiight,” he says. The short one takes out his phone again and murmurs something about an Uber car. “So I guess batshit crazy people live in this neighborhood, too.”
I shrug and keep smiling. I drop the bag of shit at his feet. I give Humbert’s leash a tug and we start walking again.
“Crazy bitch,” he says behind me, but Humbert and I are already rounding the corner, heading back to the apartment.
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When we get home I take a shower and wipe the grit out of the bathtub. I get in bed and turn out the light and wait for my boyfriend to get home from bartending. Humbert is curled in the crook of my knees, asleep with his head on my calf. I rub the tip of his ear between my fingers, listening to people on the street below. I hear raised voices, two men and a woman arguing. I smell smoke, sour like burnt hair and a moment later the curtains blow inward. An incredible light fills the apartment, hot and yellow and almost Godly, and Humbert opens his eyes, and I smile and stroke his head.
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S H E A B Y H I N T E
GLITCH
Hang keys on hook left of doorway. Unlace boots and place at doorway with toes facing street. Walk upstairs, take off pants, fold and place on the chest at the foot of bed, these are good for three days without dry-cleaning. Walk to closet, unbutton shirt, hang on the corner of another empty hanger so it faces out at you when you enter the closet, this is good for two days without dry-cleaning, tomorrow is its second day. Walk downstairs and make two ham sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise and two individually wrapped slices of cheese. Open one can light beer. Hold sandwiches on one sheet of paper towel in your left hand and beer in the right hand. Walk to recliner. Recline. Set sandwiches on lap. Put beer on coaster located atop a two-in-one lamp side table. Pick up remote. Turn on television. Search through directory of recorded programs. Choose selected recorded program. Watch.
This is Brian on days after he works. On days he does not work he makes an egg sandwich with two medium fried eggs on toasted white bread with one leaf iceberg lettuce, one slice tomato, mayonnaise on both slices of bread. He eats this with exactly two half-drank cups of black coffee. He drinks one
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halfway down until it is a temperature somewhere between hot and not hot that he despises. Then, he gets up from his recliner, which is where he eats while watching his programs, and walks to the kitchen to fill the coffee mug to the top. This creates the perfect drinking temperature. He will be able to drink just over half of the contents of the second cup before it reaches said temperature between hot and not hot he despises. On his days off he will sit in his recliner for almost all hours he is awake. In his recliner he will first watch the program he has recorded. When he is caught up with the recorded programs he will switch to real time television. The program is always UltraReality: When Reality Becomes Ultra Reality. The show is filmed in real time for twelve hours of everyday, meaning he is almost always in a constant state of being outside of real time and is, instead, always in the process of catching up to real time.
The show follows mostly young people who are UltraReal. There are some characters his age who also are apparently UltraReal. Brian, however, is skeptical that anyone his age possesses the ability to be UltraReal, seeing as he himself is not UltraReal.
The screen projects a screen. On this projected screen a man and woman sit across from each other with another screen between them. It is apparent, by no clear demarcation other than common familiarity of the UltraReal by its viewers and their understanding of its language, that the two on either side of the screen
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are lovers. No words are heard. One could mistake the projected sounds as lack of sound, as silence, but for devoted viewers there is a very specific buzz permeating out of the screen, or of its speakers, and penetrating the room in which the viewer and television are located. The buzz changes tonally as a close-lipped conversation takes place between the two lovers. They are discussing a sort of apocalypse that has torn apart other lovers but which has in fact brought them closer together. Everything is soft hues except for the eyes and mouths of the lovers, which are both such deep blues they almost appear on the screen as black blobs moving atop the lovers. The apocalypse, one of what they describe as one of many, as in they will continue forever to be in a constant state of existing in end, has just broken up their two best friends. Both of these lovers, the ones broken up by apocalypse, were once lovers to the lovers on either side of the screen. A high pitched buzz takes place and the viewer knows that things between the two lovers are the best they’ve been. The two lovers unplug themselves and the screen between them lifts up like a theatre backdrop, the two disappear and the screen buzzes for a moment in the slight green between blue and yellow. One can no longer see the lovers but knows that they exist still in the room.
There is a two inch white spot on Brian’s television. It looks like it could spread. He knows it is not a part of UltraReality: When Reality Becomes Ultra Real. It is not the right color. He gets off the recliner and walks to the screen where the white spot has emerged. He touches it and feels nothing other than the fine
52
ripples of TV screen. He kneels down to look at it and is so close that he cannot see it. It has blended into the images projecting from his television. For a moment he watches his program like this, but he gets the sense that this is not real, that this is disrupting the reality and he cannot stand to sit blind to it by this patch emerging whose sole intention appears to be manipulating Brian. He gets up and paces back and forth until his feet begin to burn from the carpet. He makes it back to the recliner, sits, and closes his eyes willing the spot to be gone when he opens them again. He opens them and looks at the screen. The spot is still there. He can feel sweat about to fall from his upper lip into his mouth. The screen is distorted. UltraReality is distorted. He can’t stand to look at it. He grabs the remote from his two-in-one lamp side table and clicks the television off. It is just past 2am. There is no one who can help him resolve this issue at the moment. In his mind, he sees a clock like the ones on scoreboards at sporting events flipping time. Time displayed like this appears to carry more weight than normal time. This, for Brian, is all the time he is losing from UltraReality, all the time he is being set back by and will have to spend hours not sleeping in the days following to catch up to. Tonight he will not be able to sleep. He will get in his car at six fifty-two a.m. and drive for five minutes to the electronic supply store by his house. He will wait another minute outside the locked and chained doors of the electronic supply store until someone lets him in to purchase a new, unblemished television. He just
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hopes that it is his television and not his recording device malfunctioning and projecting the white spot. If it were, he could lose days of UltraReal information.
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J O H N B A B B O T TMARGE NARROWLY ESCAPES ON HORSEBACK
FROM CARPATHIAN BANDITS ON HORSEBACK
Marge worked at the Story Factory, in the Shoveling Department, where she worked all day shoveling terrible stories into the Terrible Story Furnace. She didn’t really write herself, well, maybe a little, maybe some journaling here and there, some false starts, but nothing polished. She wrote, but she didn’t write, anyway. Until one day near the end of her shift, while Marge leaned pensively on her shovel, a pipe carrying exhaust fumes from the Language Generation Chamber (where the Creation Fire was stoked) sprang a sudden leak. She sighed deeply several times, breathing the fumes, and presently found herself with an Idea.
Where was Marge, just then, with her hands folded delicately over the polished wooden handle and the large sharp blade balanced precisely on the ground like the single incisor of some interesting, one-toothed animal, at the precise moment in which Marge was visited upon by an Idea? That’s right: second catwalk, Shoveling Department. Marge plucked up her courage. Dizzied by excitement and slightly hypoxic from the fumes, she fed her time
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card into the machine, kachunk! And hurried home to begin her story.
Marge wrote at a furious pace, as if being pursued by wild dogs, or as if she were a wild dog pursuing something, pausing periodically to twirl her pencil like a baton and consider the metaphorical space above and to the front-left of her head, which teemed with images and ideas, before bearing down again to continue writing at a furious pace, the tip of her pencil scrabbling wildly after the words which lunged just ahead of her like a pack of you-know-what.
The story leapt from her.
After an elegant beginning and a gut-busting middle, she found herself nearing the end of the story on horseback, being pursued wildly by Carpathian bandits on horseback. The pursuit was hot, and escape was uncertain, but her sorrel mare’s lungs heaved hugely as she galloped across the dusty plain just ahead of the darkly handsome bandit captain and his savage knot of brigands. Twice the bandit captain reached for her and came so close that his rough, ring-laden fingers brushed strands of Marge’s flying hair, but Marge whispered words of encouragement into the ear of her sorrel mare in the language her mare best understood, and twice she surged ahead, and reached the treacherous mountain pass unscathed. Her sure-footed mare carried her through, and at night she circled back to the ring of fires marking the
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Carpathian bandit’s camp, stole past the brooding brigands, and slunk catlike into the darkly handsome bandit captain’s carpeted yurt, where she discovered that he was not only darkly handsome but also well endowed, and where he discovered that his former foe was the only woman strong enough for his love, and they ruled the plains together with benevolently iron fists until they perished gloriously in battle, having lived truly and well, the end! Marge gasped and tipped over backwards in her chair and lay on the floor, her chest heaving amply.
It was the best story in the world.
She went outside to smell the night and gaze at the stars, and she perambulated the house until sunrise. Then, refreshed, she went back to work at the Shoveling Department.
Did Marge then possess an air of quiet, triumphant satisfaction because she knew the story she carried rolled up in her back pocket to be the best in the world, ever? Did her story hold the potential to bring to people laughter, tears, terror, joy? To change people’s whole perspective on things and to crystallize meaning for them in a big big way? Was Shift Manager Jerry presently in front of her, ejecting spittle from sluglike lips as he chewed Marge out for wool-gathering on the job? Yes, yesyesyes, and yes. Marge calmly regarded Shift Manager Jerry’s tirade until Jerry, unnerved by Marge’s calm, stepped
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backwards and brushed his sleeve against a hot pipe and caught on fire, and went up in flames that Marge was obliged to calmly extinguish, which immediately triggered an Incident Review Review with Jerry, Marge and Mr. Large. Mr. Large, impressed by Marge’s uncanny poise, supplanted Jerry with Marge as Shift Manager and packed Jerry off to the burn ward. Shift Manager Marge returned to the Shoveling Department and strolled along the catwalk patting one palm with her rolled-up story like a baton, surveying her new domain, and heaved a satisfied sigh just before the story slipped from her hands and dropped into the Terrible Story Furnace.
Marge gripped the railing with both hands, staring at the spot where the flash of white flame marked the sudden and complete dissolution of 100% of the story she had written. Frantically, she ran to the bulletin board and ripped from it the first pieces of paper her hands fell upon, which happened to be the Safety and Shoveling Technique Placards, an action that Mr. Large observed with disapproval from within his glass office that lorded above the Shoveling Department. Marge wrote as much as she could remember as fast as she could, but when she was finished and read back over her words, her heart turned to uranium and began poisoning the rest of her: the reproduction was a laughable attempt, possessing none of the magic of the first. What remained was a bad Harlequin romance, with Carpathian thrice misspelled.
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Gone, her sure-footed sorrel mare.
Gone, her well-endowed bandit captain.
Gone, her potential to bring laughter, tears etc.
Marge lumped home and wept, shortly after Mr. Large had demoted her to Shoveler, Third Class for Placard Removal and Defilement.
After several days of tears Marge, severely dehydrated, crawled to her desk, climbed from tear-puddled floor into chair, and waited, soggy pencil raised. No stories leapt from it. Where did they go? Where had they last come from? Then she remembered: The broken pipe. The exhaust fumes. The Language Generation Chamber. Marge received, just then, her second big Idea that week: she had to get as close as possible to the Creation Fire. Screw the fumes—she had to behold the Fire itself. Then—and only then—would she find her way back to that moment of Original Mystery, and from that all-knowing place, she would re-write the greatest story in the world.
As she had been crying for several days and attempting unsuccessfully to write for ten minutes, Marge had not reported to work, and had been fired by Mr. Large. This was no deterrent. She dressed in black, donned stealthy felt slippers, and scaled the Story Factory fence in the dead of night.
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When Marge reached the Language Generation Chamber, she was breathing hard and also bleeding badly from having been temporarily waylaid by the sharp accordion of barbed wire atop the Story Factory fence, but she was there. In the middle of the Chamber, the Creation Fire roared orangely inside its great cistern, the one window in the thick door glowing like the eye of God, or like the eye of an orange-eyed whale representing the leviathan of her subconscious. She approached the window, felt its exquisite heat. The Original Mystery was in there, in front of her. She closed her eyes and reached for it with her heart. It was no good. She would have to open the door to behold it, just for a moment. Marge braced herself for the heat. She grasped the handle with the potholder she had brought along just in case, turned it and swung open the door. There! She could feel it so much stronger now, the prickles of heat tap dancing across her bloody skin. It drew her in. Just one kiss from the fire, Marge thought, will be enough.
Marge leaned in, touched the fire, and was consumed.
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