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Short Story: Theo

Mother gave me this paper after the blonde woman left.  The woman was searching for something…  Whatever the case, the paper smells fresh and bright, and is wrought with secrets and bound in love.  It reminds me of a time before this time, of a life elsewhere lived, with mother and myself…  It is a fit story, and will pass the time.

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The world smelt of pine.  It was a biting smell that crept up my nose, behind my ears.  It moved like the strange trees above me with their dwindling needle tip branches, green as ever.  Green as grey they were, as grey the sky above them, as hungry as…

As hungry as I was.

The grey was hungry, the green as well, the roots at my back and the air in my lungs.   My stomach ached with need, and I roared out, frustrated, prone on my back in what we now would call the wilderness.

My call rocked out through the pines, who for fear of me sent on my cry, relayed branch to branch.

The cries rang out for hours, and minutes, and moments.  And again the world was quiet, though my face was wet.

The hungry air was chewed up by my immortal lungs, my mouth ready to let forth another call for food.  I was petulant and demanding.  I was hungry.

The bear, however, was simply curious.

 

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It is a mystery of bears, that they can treat men so many ways.  A mystery deeper still, in that they occupy both mankind’s gentler thoughts and their deepest respect.  Respect here meaning fear, that is, fear encompassed in sense.

You see, this particular bear respected me.  My roars were great, it knew.  I could devastate the forest with my song.

As I regarded it, my second scream died in my lungs, fading and whimpering and muttering away, puttering out as nonsense words to the great beast above me.

Its face took up the sky, its smell the woodland.

It was a she-bear.

She looked me over, cocking her head now left, now right.   Regarding me, questioning.

Her eyes held stories and songs that I would never sing, yet in that deep blackness I saw myself dance.

Wrapped in a warm cloth I lay, my body enmeshed in softest fabrics, made for someone loving by someone wise.  A pair of someones who I would never meet, a skill I would never learn, a love  I would never feel.

The bear’s nose was wet and brown like water-soaked bark.  I felt my smell being snatched up into that nose.  The nose traveled up along my leg and explored my torso, my shoulder, my hands, my breath.

The great face that took up the sky backed away with a jerk.  In her throat, a thick branch bent, and rumbled out its complaint.

The bear had dewy, shining fur of a brown like you see in people’s eyes.  That kind of color you only notice when they look at you too long.   She was a great thing, all strength and power, with a raw depth of existence that comes with the sheer size of a creature.  She was an ocean, she was a sky, she was a sun, for all that she was.  I could feel her strength like one feels sunlight.

I did not know if she was hungry, but she moved around me, sniffing the earth.  An errant sniff of that nose could fissure the earth.   Her nose was as my eyes, all her sight draught in through those cavities in the forwardmost part of her snout.  She moved away, and my eyes followed.  She had moved a few yards distant, and was looking off intently into the woods.

By the time I touched her foot, I realized that I, not she, had moved.  Over my spine I had tumbled, snake like, crawling on my knees and arms, my oversized head driven by the sight of her, wanting to be near that sun of strength.  Wanting food.

Mothers gave you food.

My hand, a strange starfish of flesh, tugged at her ankle.

Her head whipped about, her eyes wild for a moment.

The sun could flare, the seas could rage, the sky could fall.  Bears can break men many times my size with a fleck of a paw.  In her eyes was that strength, that greatness of nature that breaks the dreams of men upon the rocks of reality.

And just as sudden as the storm raged, the storm left.  Her eyes, those lakes of wisdom, grew placid, and, if I could understand, sad.  She sat, gingerly.  Just as softly, she took me up in her paws.  I could feel her handling me like a scholar might hold an ancient book.  So much care was taken that the wholeness of her held back, that her greatness would not crush me.

I did not know fear, only need.  I stood up upon those great pads and rested my hands upon her chest, smelling up at her mouth, and smiling.  Feed me?

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And she would.  Year after year, until I grew strong enough on my own.

She taught me to catch the salmon of the river white, and to mark the trees of my land, and to hide as a stone amongst the wood.  She showed me the leaves to eat and the poisons to disdain.  And never did we speak, understanding in our eyes.

But the wood could speak, and awakened my secrets I had left for myself.

The birds spoke for the trees, as the wind called through them.  The many insects of night chittered and chortled.  The wildcat cried out at night, afeared, and the dogs would howl.  They were old dogs, the kind that men fear, for their loyalty is to their kin, and their minds are as wise as they are wild.  I was raised by a thousand woodland sovereigns, and I spoke their many tongues, and one tongue alone it seemed to me.

And I spoke to the trees most of all.  They spoke as mother bear spoke, watching and waiting and guiding.  They were older than she, older than men.  They were solid and great and silent.  And they spoke to me daily, their pine-smell singing through my senses, their bark callousing my hands and feet.

And as the years went on, I remembered the bindings I had once known.  It seemed to me they were etched in the trees, writ upon the leaves, and I remembered.

The trees sung of an elder tree, of an oak, of an ash.  They sung each of one tree as if all the trees were that tree, each one a mimic of its kind.  These were pines, and they sang through the year of deeper trees, of myriad roots, that lay hidden in the depths of the wood.  They sang of a deeper wood, of a place where light did not break through the branches to the earth below, where the bark grew could and the ground hard and the secrets deep and true.  They sang of a bear- tree, a being of such greatness that it unbound itself from form, and hungered, as I had hungered.  It was an end, and a beginning, and in it were the secrets of oldest life.  It was a well of water and wisdom, it was a serpent that slew.  It was many things, but all that it was, was terrible, and hungry.  And of it I would soon have much need.

The old mother who had raised me in her power dwindled over time, her joints aching, her sight fading as the evening light.  Her strength had become mine.

She had been the sun and the sea and the sky, and that weight was much to bare.  Her eyes were sadder now, her heart confused.  How could the sky crumble?  How could the sunlight dwindle?

I knew she would grow violent in her old days, and even as a man grown, I knew that one brush of her claws would end my flesh.  I gave her more distance by our bodies, but her presence was ever close in my dreams.

Her strength was not mine.  It was in her, it was her.  I had not that kind of strength.  That was the gift of the beasts, to be their own strength.  This was not the strength of men.

The riddles were mine, and the writing on the leaves, and the binding of the babe born again in the wood.  A wizard remembered, in a child forgotten.  This had all come to pass once before, and could turn again.

It was for mother bear that I left the world of the sun and traveled deep into the twilight depths of the umber wood.

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I knew an old binding, a ritual of renewal.  Mother could again be the sky, and the sea, and the sun.  But to bind them back to her, anew again, I would need to bind the shadow that had befallen her.

I had done this before, I was sure.  With that certainty, I passed from the wood, and the sky, and the sun, and the sea.  With a single silent promise, I wandered into darkness.

There is a song that shadow sings, that we remember only in our waking days, and that we hear again at our end.  In that song is an answer to the tale of time, and in that answer, my gift to the mother who brought me up in the wood.

As I had forgotten the speech of men, I could sing that song still, and that song alone, I knew, could bind the shadows to me.

The roots grew great, and became one with the woodland, the space between trees becoming the earth itself.  The light receded and faded, and my ears became my eyes.  The sound of the river was new now, not that trickling above land, but the tip-tapping of it beneath the earth.  The trees were veins now, glinting sparks of stone and growths of bright fungi growing around me.  The woodland was cold, and damp, and the soil grew harder and more treacherous.

The great beasts of the wood would not travel here, for this world of shadow was home only to the little kin, the small creatures that see without sight and feed upon greater things in the night.

But I had learned their bindings early in life, and held them at bay with a trick of song.  Wherever I went, I was not, as far as their senses knew.  So slumber I might without fear.

Days I may have traveled in darkness, night becoming light, becoming months, and years, and time itself.  To pass forward was to know my dream and goal, and the world passed from sense, even of the song of sounds, and the drumbeat of touch.  Nothing enveloped me in that deepest of places, for time all about.  And then I saw it.

Two eyes, great as the stars, stared at me.  A maw of starlight flashed at me, a cosmos of teeth snapping at my toes.

I had found the deeper darkness, the secret that slumbers beneath the tree of everything.

I felt the hunger I had known when mother bear had first found me, and I felt the fear of men in the face of greatness.

The maw grew great, and I felt the heat of everything, and the still of nothing, rushing at me.

I sang.

 

In the space of heat and cold, there is absolution.  Both sides may end the weakness of man.  yet the riddles of old tell tales of how man is the heat, and same, the cold.  And the song I learned long ago- or that I would learn, some later day- the song rang out a riddle of heat and cold, of beginning and end.  the song had no beginning, and no end, and for that matter, was all a center, as deep as deepest shadow.  It was a song as bright as day.   It was a song of the senses, and yet was senseless, and I was no more in that deepest of shadows.

 

And when I awoke, I was a babe again, and my mother looked down at me.  She was young, this mother, and soft and weak as men, for she was of their blood now.  She was wrapped in the softest of clothes, the kind made for someone loving by someone wise.  Yet I knew her of old, for I saw the sea, and sun, and sky in her eyes.

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Book Review: The Anansi Boys

So for everyone who enjoyed the literalist version of anthropomorphized animals in H.G. Well’s “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” you’ll find some of the events of “The Anansi Boys” similar.

While Moreau is an eerie satire of the field of vivisection,  Boys is a journey into the realms between reality and fantasy, which author Neil Gaiman so much enjoys.  I have just finished up his Sandman series, which is not only seminal, it’s succulent.  It’s very good.  If you have the means, I highly recommend it: it is choice.  So choice, in fact, that I picked up Good Omens, American Gods, and the Anansi Boys from the local library.  That good.

Anyway, to our review:

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Synopsis

Fat Charlie Nancy (the worst name in the world, I’m sure), has just lost his father, which is kind of alright, because his father always embarrassed him.  He’s getting ready to marry his eighteen month girlfriend, Rosie, and then consummate the thing for the first time.  While Rosie’s mother is opposed to idea, Charlie’s brother is even more against it.  

Thing with Charlie’s brother is, they’ve never met.  But Charlie’s brother is special.  Like, kind of a God, special.  And when he shows up to say ‘Hello,” Charlie’s life is turned upside down.

 

The plot follows a semi-comedic romp, with an out and out monster as our weasily-tigery villain, a sexy do-gooder cop as a romantic interest, a gaggle of old women as our cast of supporting characters, and a couple of deities and ‘duppies’ to round out the cast.  It very much reminded me of Gaiman’s work in The Sandman, with a slightly lighter flair to it.

 

Techniques

Gaiman deals in third person omniscient narrative, focusing his all-seeing eye on specific characters.  Our chief Focus is Fat Charlie himself, and his general inclination towards bumbling and embarrassment drive the flavor of the narrative.  Moments can be grand and they can be heart wrenching, but most often, they are humorous and a little goofy (kind of like a certain prize-winning dog the author mentions).

Genre
Overall, I would call the work a rom-com.  It is not unlike a romantic action movie that Gaiman might have seen, saying, ‘oh, that’s an interesting story… I wonder what the Gods are doing in it.”

The work is a series of parallel arcs whose characters intersect to knot the narratives together. Our midsummer night lover group are the Anansi boys, Charlie and Spider, and their damsels are Daisy and Rosie (flowers, appropriately enough).  Our villain is one Grahame Coats, clearly a villain from the outset, who goes from his usual malign ambivalence to a full-on monster by the end of the tale.  

This cast would almost be enough to make the action movie alone, as Spider and Charlie become rivals for Rosie’s affection, and Daisy investigates into some criminal activity involving Mr. Coats and Charlie.

But the supporting cast really gets the boys into the world of magic and gods.

Mixing a bit of Midsummer with a touch of Macbeth, our ‘Puck’ gets intermingled with the witches to make an innocent, stupid and sentimental set of septagenarians.  

Literally, these crones live in Florida and deal with haphazard spell ingredients.  There is a scene that blatantly references Macbeth.  At least one.

Another old woman, Maeve Livingstone,  plays a small but vital role as a side nemesis to Grahame Coats.

Then we get into our Gods, which reflects Midsummer even closlier.  These (along with the witches) I believe are Gaiman’s favorite lens for the book.  Specifically, these are old Gods, animal Gods from African mythology.  And they’ve even got a Titania and an Oberon.

Well, if Titania had claws and cat-like reflexes and Oberon dealt in webs and trickery…  Anyway, the ‘changeling’ in this arc is the possession of stories themselves.  All stories. Ever.  and by extension, culture and the scope of the human experience.  

And taking that little god-feud, Gaiman ramps up this rom-com/ action novel into the world of fantasy and adventure.

Overall

A great read.  I took it up one day and finished it at 4:30 am the next morning.  So.  Very strong sense of plot, very big fantasy arc, very fun romances, good action.  A few moments of heart-warming sentiment, and plenty of excellent dialogue.  Gaiman spins a good tale, and Anansi Boys is one of his most amusing ones so far.

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Nought and Laughter Myths

This is what I get for reading “In the Land of Time” by Dunsany and interrupting it with “The Anansi Boys” by Gaiman:

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They call it he which is nought.

and from the beginning,

nought was, for before all, there was nought,

and after all, nought will be.

 

But now nought is not,

and then he will be not.

And yet to call him ‘he’ is to misname his ‘she’-ness, for they are both that which are,

and of that which is, they are part, and so nought is not of them,

save in that each is not the other.  So only in being definitely one, is one in any way nought.

 

Therefore, nought walks the earth.

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And men and women cry aloud, saying that nought should not be.

Yet nought is, for each has claimed oneself, and such as such, has made the world their nought.

And small as they are, they have made nought great, for in their oneness have they made a great nought.

 

To give nought form is to call to mind shadow, to call to mind night.

For that which we call night is simply the shadow of light, for night is nought but the absence of day, and day is simply the light that shines and cannot stop.

 

Sleep and dream are the follies of another god, who mingles with mortals and men

and laughs and cries with them

and sees that they make nought great

though nought is nought,

 

and this god laughs for he knows where all the parts of the great god are,

for his is the laughter that fuels through the belly of the greatest god

and surges through the feet at its depths, and erupts out of the mouth

and into the space which we would think is nought but in the voice of the god is part of the god, and in so doing, laughter makes nought part of god.

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But this god, laughter, and his dominions of sleep and dream, mingle with nought in that men do not always see the jest in dream and sleep, and from such dreams arise with fear, for nought clouds their minds and brings them pain.

 

For nought is the space that the gods fill in, and like a cancer upon nought they grow, and in them nought is unmade, for it is created, and therefore cannot be nought.

 

And at this joke the laughter grows, and nought becomes less and less, and only through men is it made great, for they are born again and again to strive to know, and to not know, and in not knowing, but thinking they know, they make nought great.

 

This is why laughter finds it strange the way men dream,

for their dreams are things defined by their waking day,

in so much as they sleep for a straight eight hour time

and labor for another eight or more, to live a life in a third of their time,

and be bound by each other, which is to be bound by nought

(for no man is bound save by himself, yet many is the man bound by things which do not bind, nor never have bound)

 

(there is a story of wolves bound in a such a way. perhaps dogs are the wolf bodies of men and men are the wolf souls of dogs, born of great beast bound by a leash of nought)

 

There have been men,

(by men we mean mortals, of either half of the rock that they were carved,

male or female, men all the same in the respect of their race)

– there have been men, who in times past, slept only sleep was needed,

and woke the rest of the day.

 

And day meant not  when the light was on, and night was not when the light was past,

for day was simply the span of the sleep of the man, however long it took to gain that fullness.  But sleep for some was not as sleep for all,

for a tool it was for beasts to recover and to hide when they could not see.

 

But men have been given dominion over the hours of the day

and the coming of the light and the dark.

So day is not to them what it is to beasts, and sleep a think unlike other things.

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This change of sleep changes the nature of dream, which changes in turn the laughter,

which dances into nought and back again into god,

and nought hates laughter most of all

for in laughter is nought’s greatest defeat,

for of all gods, alone does laughter love nought,

for laughter understands nought,

and sees the depths of nought which are and which will never be,

for they never were, for that is nought.

 

So to sleep by night is not to say to sleep, nor is it to wake by day,

for this is the way of beasts bound by the spinning of earth, not by nought,

but by the nature around them.

Men, aware of their nature, and of the nature about them,

can rise above this little sleep and extend their days beyond all this,

and wake and sleep and wake again, regardless of the lamplight.

 

But men are bound by nought, and in nought have they fashioned chains

to make them as beasts, docile and useful, part of a larger machine made of nought.

And in men nought finds greatness, and in laughter nought finds fear,

for nought knows laughter, and laughter knows nought,

and men that laugh know that nought binds them,

and in so doing, they know they are free.

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Being Moreau-se

A Review of the Island of Dr. Moreau

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So a curious incident occurred as I read the Island of Dr. Moreau, by one HG Wells.   Rather, just after finishing the novel.  I set back to some work whose deadline is hurtling at me like one of Moreau’s creations, only to divert myself on the brief distraction of reading Tom Siddell’s ‘Gunnerkrigg Court,’ during which, currently, a student is giving a small boon to each of the denizens of a forest.  As he helps one creature, more and more creatures come to this boy for help.  Today’s splash panel gave a certain conclusiveness to the current arc which strangely mirrors the morals of Dr. Moreau. 

Summary

So Moreau is an island tale, not a little reminiscent to me of Lord of the Flies.  Wells finds a way to take the art of vivisection (plastic surgery) and call issue with it, basically saying that, without ethics, men may well play gods.  His work, overall, explores this theme, and what happens to those who have the hubris to create beyond subcreation (which is to say, make the shadow of the real, and try to make the real, or remake the external world in one’s own desire).

The novel is also something akin to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in its dangers and themes.  In essence, it is a group Prometheus tale, where rather than dead flesh, the sane but… curiously invested Doctor Moreau creates a society of experiments.  Our narrator is Eric Prendick, a gentleman of the narratorly persuasion – given to fits of ambivalence, equivocation, and eventually courage, but culminating ultimately in aloofness (not unlike many narrators).

 

Techniques

Wells tells his work in first person past tense renditions, each chapter having a concise and well-driven arc.

He uses a kind of allegory in his work, which grows stronger throughout.

Themes

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

While Wells means to look into the dangers of vivisection (which correlates marvelously to genetics), taken without ethics, Wells examines the nature of pain and the idea of transformation.  He warns against playing god, and against screwing with the natural order of the world through science.   Which is also sort of what the recent gunnerkrigg comic warns against, only the ‘god’ figure in gunnerkrigg is more of beneficent character with a smaller impact, and in Moreau, the god figure is much more maleficent with a life-altering impact.

“Men are not beasts.”

Wells also uses his work to later look at human society and the social, political, and religious barriers placed on us.  By the end of the novel he directly contrasts various everyday persons with wild beasts, and evokes the underlying dread that beneath it all, we are beasts.  Yet he also includes a hope for humanity stemming from our reason, our empathy, and our inherent morality, which all separate us from beasts.

Emotional Reactions

If you enjoy thrillers with a few gut-wrenching moments of revulsion, and a smatterign of very satisfying ‘bigger picture’ revelations, you would probably enjoy The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Conclusion

This is the first Wells that I’ve actually read in non-graphic novel form.  Can’t wait to read more of his works.

 

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So What is Iz?

Courtesy of HD_wallpapers.in

Courtesy of HD_wallpapers.in

Where, I suppose, more precisely, fits for a setting. On the other hand, where becomes an inadequate question when dealing with spaces that do not fit into the physical universe – at least, spaces that most likely do not exist in our physical universe. The question ‘where’ gets us thinking of setting as somewhere we can go, gives us a horizontal and vertical relationship to another described concept. ‘Where’ is just as much about the asker of the question as it is about the answer of the question. As one of the root ‘w’s of questions, I feel like where is the one that calls forth the most prepositions, which of themselves are all about relationships. I don’t want to delve into how Iz relates to us yet, so I kind of want to leave ‘where’ on the shelf in favor of ‘what.’

‘What,’ calls out a description of a singular thing. It leaves objects in their own context and does not try to relate them to us. This, I find, is a better starting ground for Iz than where, simply to define the creation as its sole self. ‘Where,’ I find, will become a major element of the story of the witches of Iz, and so that won’t be addressed just yet.

As to what Iz is, imagine a world with a history nearly identical to our own. The geography pretty much matches, the historical figures are largely the same, the political borders sort of all fit in a similar manner. The only difference – and this is, granted, a fairly massive difference – is that technology is not part of mankind’s system. Technology, in our world, has had a huge impact on history and has in many ways caused the revolutions that shape our society. The world of Iz never had this same growth, because it was never needed. Magic grew in place of technology, and forged the course of human history (somehow into very similar events).

But humans became more about services than about products, and their society grew based on the increased knowledge of spells. Science and philosophy served the magical fields of study, and through them, magic grew and improved. But there was never a need for technology.

This is the very broad history of the world I’m creating, and gives a base context for a good number of contrasts to our very technological world.

For now, that’s what Iz is. Our world with magic instead of technology.

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The Coughing Fit

A little short story I wrote, inspired by ideas had while grading over in Fenwick.

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The Coughing Fit

Mark was sitting less than pleasantly by his less than pleasant self at a small library desk which, coincidentally, was less than pleasant. Mark was uncertain how much he believed in coincidences, but was quite certain that this seat, himself, and his manner of sitting were all most definitely less than pleasant.

Mark was working hard at doing nothing – that is, nothing that he enjoyed doing, and nothing that was getting him anywhere in life. Mark had found himself finding work for the last several years, floundering through most of it like some miserable fish on a dock. For all of it, Mark thought himself ill-defined: he was neither overly dumpy nor particularly thin, in no way muscular or handsome, with a poorly shaved face that came off as patchier than it ought to. Mark was a man among men, a runner upon that mill of humanity, and his most fervent hope was to somehow stand out without having to do anything special. Such is the dream of many men, all run of the mill, and Mark himself was no different.

He had been making especially strong strides on this particular batch of nothing that he had to do, due on an unimportant but swiftly approaching deadline, and he felt the smallest tinge of satisfaction in his productivity. He was a machine, a force with which to be reckoned. Yet here he was, working, alone, letting his dreams slip him by- whatever it was they had been when he had had dreams – and now he was about to accomplish someone else’s deadline and deliver his weekly deliverable.

He was working in the library as a point of necessity. The power at home had been as spotty as his pay was lackluster, and he found himself getting too little signal for that magical internet which allowed him to connect not only to work but to every distraction he needed in order to make his work an eight hour exercise. So, wanting for internet and electricity, he had quit his rather drab and ill kempt welling and sauntered with relative aim over to the library.

Mark enjoyed sauntering. It was, he thought, one of his greater skills. He could saunter with the best of them. If there had been a prize for sauntering, why, he would have it.

Only right now, he was no longer sauntering. He was meeting a deadline. Crunches were his best time to accomplish work, and here he was, crunching away on a small, antiquated computer whose internet was somehow vastly superior to his own. He was nearly positive he was eighty percent finished. Well, maybe not eighty percent. What was a percentage, anyway? Would he be graded, like in the first twenty odd years of his life, with a decent grade for eighty percent? No. Would he be rewarded in anyway? No. He would be allowed to do more work for someone who didn’t know his name and didn’t give a rat’s-

And that was when he heard the coughing.

It was a good, hard cough. A racking, heaving cough that went on like a roller coaster of wind and phlegm from some distant but all-to-close corner of the library. And it was his first distraction since he had sauntered over to library.

Knowing that he could saunter no more until his work was done, Mark took to thrilling in the exercise of looking around for the source of the overly loud cough.

He looked behind himself. But he knew it hadn’t come from there, he thought as his eyes passed over dinged-up bookshelves full of overlooked tomes. He wheeled his chair around and craned his neck over his little wooden cubicle.

He was seated in a sort of hall between bookshelves, left especially wide for wanderers and perusers to pass each other by. His cubicle was one such in a row of cubicles, equipped each with like computers, donated by tax dollars and people with too much money. In front of him stretched six rows of bookshelves, numbered and sorted in that odd dewie system he remembered learning about vaguely in gradeschool. Beyond the shelves was another little walkway, then more shelves, then the old brick library wall.

He leaned left. Nobody. Then right: someone passing through, an older man. No. The cough, he thought to himself, had been a woman’s cough.

With a little shrug, he ceased his efforts, as the disctraction was becoming a task, and returned to his productivity. These files weren’t going to process themselves, after all.

He was getting back into the rhythm, the glare of the computer screen no longer bothering his eyes, his mouse clicking like a thing alive as he checked, double checked, updated, cross checked, stamped, dated, signed, and cc’d each document. He was a man on mission, and he would change his company forever, and maybe Susan down in HR would flash him one of her cheesecake smiles she only flashed at the bigwigs, and…

And the coughing struck out again. A shot from the strangest corners of the library, somewhere deep and dense, hidden away. Maybe a bathroom, he thought. But it was the same, great hacking as before, but this time longer, almost with a kind of rhythm to it (the kind that one assigns to meaningless patterns).

Immediately he was out of his own rhythm – Mark was off-mark. He had to be nearly done, he was sure, but by god were his eyes sore. And maybe that was carpal tunnel he was feeling in that left hand there… But he was so close.

Back into the fray of white and black he went, arial fonts filling in spaces previously blank on documents both utilitarian and nihilistic. Almost there. He could finish this up, and then saunter back home. Maybe it was cooler out. That could be nice. Hopefully not too cool, though.

God, there were so many forms.

Then the coughing wailed out again, softer but more painful. There was a good deal of phlegm to be had somewhere in the library, and someone was having all of it.

But Mark was undeterred. He was a God of productivity, a little marvel of engineering wired to focus-

And coughing again! Honestly, he thought, this is just…

Maybe someone needed help.

Someone else would help, he was sure. He set back to that keyboard and his rhythm and the clicks and – really? There it was again. No rhythm to it, no structure, just a hacking that made his own throat hurt in what little partition of his brain held empathy.

It was that same partition that he cursed as he stood and left his cubicle. He was definitely at 95% done. He was so close.

Yet here was was, wandering down the carpeted rows between the bookshelves, seeking out the source of the coughing. It was more constant now, and he was fairly certain it was coming from the women’s bathroom.

Ninety-five percent. Funny how in school that was rewarded, but in business, the five percent left unaccomplished was held against you. People would lodge sticks so far up their hindquarters when they underpaid you. And here was some sick old nun hacking her heart out, discourteously distracting him. Maybe when he found her, he would give her a piece of his mind. He was trying to work here, after all. Some people had jobs.

The number of retirees he had seen in the library over the past months had been ridiculous. It was like a mecca for the bluehairs. He sort of resented them: their slowness, their intolerance, their inability to negotiate. Well. When he said negotiate he really meant give any ground at all because, after all they thought they deserved everything they were getting, all of which, by the by, was free, and… well, crap, here he was, being a solid samaritan and checking on this mystery geezer when surely come Monday, Todd, the new monkey in charge of budgeting, would breathing down Mark’s neck all day unless Mark got more work done.

How dare this old lady cough like this? Didn’t she know how hard he was working?

All old people were the same. If they had a problem, they didn’t care who knew, they’d make a fuss all the same. Well, they’d been through work and they’d saved and kudos to them for that, but some people still had their whole working lives ahead of them, thank you very much, and just to keep that nine to five and that petence of a paycheck, Mark had to complete his deliverables. So here he was, and honestly, he was none too pleased to be so close to getting work done, and this old – whatever she was- just kept on hacking. Mark wasn’t sure it was going to stop. He’d ask her nicely to keep it down, maybe. He’d offer her something, maybe just let her know it was bothering him, and really, that she should be a little more considerate in a public building, and…

And there in one of the study rooms was an old lady, bent over her chair, coughing. She was in a deep red shawl, riddled with intricate letters and designs of a language that Mark couldn’t recognize. She had long raven hair that was going to gray in frilly strands, and her face was pocked and lined with age, spotted with moles like a painter’s tarp. A thin hand was covering her mouth and holding a very well made handkerchief with the same designs on it as her shawl. She was a dumpy old lady, having given herself over to fat in her age, and her black robe under the shawl did no good to complement herself.

Mark felt himself almost pitying her. At least he wasn’t old, even if life had stood him up.

He opened the door and poked his head in.

“Hey.” He said. It felt informal enough. “You alright?”

The old foreign looking bat looked up at him with a beaky nose and eyes that glinted black and green. Her face was blank.

“Can I get you anything? Some water?” He went on. Try to seem courteous, it’s better than telling her to shut up.

She waved him off with her free hand, a withered and knotty thing. Her face crinkled.

He thought about leaving, but she started to breath deep again, like as to hack.

That was when he fully entered the room, standing there. What was he doing?

“Breath.” He said. “Get a good deep breath and just let it out.”

The door shut behind him. She breathed in.

The room was still except for that odd buzzing that counts for silence in buildings. Something banged dully in the airducts a few feet up.

She breathed out and considered him for a moment. The buzzing was deafening.

“So um.” He sort of started, wishing he’d just left. Maybe stayed at his cubicle. “Did that help?”

He thought he saw her smile. It was a weird, wicked smile, and he swore he saw part of a sickly caramel colored snaggletooth. He felt behind him to open the door. Sure, it worked – she had stopped coughing. He felt very odd, like he should definitely leave.

But the doorhandle was locked. That was also odd. The darned thing must have gotten jammed.

His mind raced to Todd in budgeting and to Susan in HR and they were doing terrible things in front of him because he hadn’t made his deliverables, and for some reason Todd had Mark’s mother’s face, and just kept saying ‘we’re so disappointed in you.’ And honestly, the brain is a stupid thing sometimes, because none of this was Mark’s fault, and he had come here just to solve a problem, and -

“Mark.” It was the old woman. Her mouth had barely moved.

“Mark.” She had a very familiar voice. Was she like, a relative, or… or how did she know his name?

“Mark.” It was like a reproach, and he let go of the jammed door.

“Do I,” he started, his mouth inexcusably dry, “do I know you?”

“Everyone knows me.” Said the old woman. She definitely had a snaggle tooth. For what she had in the way of teeth, anyway. Mark realized that her breath smelled very bad.

“That’s good,” he said. Wonderful. She was crazy, and the door was jammed. Wonderful. He turned to look out the glass to see if anyone spotted him.

“Mark.” She said, “Turn around.”

“Hey, if you work here, can you like, fix this thing?” He asked. That was how she knew his name – she was one of the librarians. Wasn’t she? He didn’t know, it made sense, she must have seen his library card or…

He hadn’t ever really used his library card.

“Turn around, Mark.”

He did it, leaning against the glass, nonchalantly. Well, sort of. He kind of slipped a bit and tried to recover, but the moment was definitely past and… and she smelled, really, really old.

She was sitting back now, looking very satisfied with herself.

“That door won’t unlock.” There was that semi-snaggle-toothed smile again. What was so darned pleasing about all this? “ Shut up in there, Mark. You’re talking to yourself in your head again.”

Yes, but didn’t everyone?

“Yes, but not everyone as insipid as you. So please. Just shut up, and listen.”

Oh god.

“Mark,” her voice was definitely familiar – where had he heard it before? “You won’t be getting out of this room with the door jammed. You say to yourself, yes, I will ask someone outside to let me in. But Mark, no one can see you out there. No one can see me either. This room is dark and empty and locked, as far as anyone out there knows. Now, you immediately question me and think perhaps this old bat is full of herself. But really, what does it matter if I am lying or telling the truth? Trick or no trick, no one else cares that you’re in here, no one really knows. We’re off in one small corner of a very small library, and I believe that you have somewhere else you have to be. By your manner, anyway.”

“What -”

“If you want to get out of here, you’re going to have to do me a favor.”

Oh no, he thought. This is one of those awkward old people sex things he had clicked on once not really meaning to when he was twenty. Oh god.

“Not that kind of favor.” Was she reading his mind?

“Obviously. I have established that I can, and that in this room, I have absolute power. Well, I suppose I only just established that, but the fact remains. Now. You need my help. There’s a door you want to open, and only I can set you free.”

“Stop.” Mark was talking now, this had gone on long enough. The room smelled very bad, thanks to this old bat, and he was definitely not getting into any shades of gray business with her. “Stop. You are old, and lonely, sure, that’s fine. But honestly, acting like you can read my mind is only making me think that you’re crazier. Okay? Okay. So. Look, if you don’t open this door, I can’t get you any water. For that cough.”

The room was somehow getting darker, which was very strange. The fluorescents seemed not to flicker, just… the shadows were getting longer. He’d been working too long.

“Ah yes, you’ll go and get me water and never come back, and think to yourself, what a clever ploy to play on a senile old woman just to get away from an awkward conversation. So go ahead, Mark. Go get me that water.”

His hand was on the doorknob again, turning it futilely. It wouldn’t budge.

“All you have to do is open that door.” Even her voice had a snaggletooth smile.

Then Mark realized that the glass between him and the library was fogged over with black mold. He could sort of make out that outside of it, there was another space, but the window was just… thick with the stuff.

“Who are you?” He asked. Her voice was so familiar, and somehow sinister. Mark felt a weird hollow in the pit of his stomach.

“Good.” Said the old woman, who as Mark turned, he found standing behind the table, playing with her little kerchief. “Enough parlor tricks and you realize that I mean business.”

“I have curst you, Mark. You are unable to leave this room until you promise to do me a favor. Now, I won’t pull an odd deal on you. You’ve let yourself be walked on enough. I will meet you halfway. I simply want you to bring me a simple, small item. That is all. Promise me that you will do it, and I will let you go.”

Mark didn’t have the slightest who this batty foreigner was, but everything was definitely out of whack, and something deep in his mind was telling him ‘do not bargain.’

The shadows were getting deeper, and seemed like the only light in the room came from something inside of the old woman’s handkerchief. It took Mark a moment, but he was almost certain that in there was a little candle. And the smell of the room… like the light, that smell emanated from that handkerchief as well, he was sure.

The old woman was thrown into a new kind of focus in the blackness around them. Every wrinkle and wart on her face made a pattern not unlike that which he had seen on her shawl.

“I want you to bring me an item. Is that so very hard?”

Meekly, Mark muttered back, “What?”

“Sorry?” The old creatured asked, the shadow-shapes dancing on her face.

“What. Item.” Mark felt strangely strong right now. He had never… never really stood up for himself. It felt kind of good. Then the crone smiled a full smile, and the brown-orange shards of teeth she possessed filled him with a kind of fear.

Those teeth have eaten children.

He didn’t know her, but he knew her. He didn’t recall her name, but he knew that everyone knew her, and feared her, whoever it was that she was. He had seen her in dreams. He had fled her cottage, that strange tell-tale place told of in horrors to little children. That broken building, watered down in waking day tales to let its full ferocity roam in their dreams by night.

“You know already. Good. A child’s heart will suffice. But then. Not any heart, no. I need the heart of Henrietta Colette.”

Mark’s eyes went wide. The Colette’s were Susan’s family, Henrietta was her niece. Mark had no particular attachment to Susan besides really really wanting to sleep with her some days, but seriously, this was… if she ever found out…

“Oh, Mark. She need never know. Children run away all the time. They’re real monsters, they are.”
Delicious monsters, he thought.

Maybe it had been a candied house. No, that was wrong. Was it a castle of ice with statues about it? Perhaps. He knew her of old, and he knew that bargaining was wrong. He had just never envisioned her lair as a room, in some library.

“Yes, we both know who I am, and how really irrelevant all the titles and names are. Mark. Do you want to leave? You’ve bargained nicely, you know.”

She was patronizing him. He had no reason to bring her anything, besides that. Well. He was really screwed here. And he felt that, if he did do what she asked, he was screwed as well. This was utterly ridiculous.

“So what will it be, then, Mark? Will you bring me the heart of Henrietta Colette?”

Many questions came to mind. Why, where, how, what, holy crap you crazy old lady are you seriously a…

“Yes.” She said, her breath and her voice filling the room, which was now just a pinpoint of candlelight in what felt light a cold, cold woodland.

But the one question that escaped his lips would define Mark for the rest of his life.

“How dare you?” he asked. And when the old crone’s face looked insulted, he dove right into it.

“No, really, how dare you? I came here, out of my way, to come and… and… help you. Somehow. Alright. I gave up on finishing a job, that, granted, I can’t stand. But. I came here to get you help, to check on you, to make sure that, whoever you were, you were okay and, and what, not dying, which, which I guess, You, being You, you don’t do, but… But seriously, how unfair of you. You don’t get to make a deal with me. You don’t get to lock a door and make me… I mean, honestly, a kid’s heart? That’s just. No. Screw you. Screw you and your black magic and your trick candle handerkerchief coughing. Screw you. Screw you.”

The woodland was quiet, save for a whistling of a foul wind. The midnight around them was black and cold, and Mark felt himself shivering. The only warmth came from that cursed little candle.

“You dare address me.” Said the old woman, more runes and shadows than form now, somehow much bigger than she had been. She seemed to stretch up to the very boughs of the high trees that somehow had formed around them. “You speak to me as one would speak to a mortal thing? You throw at me your morality? Spare me your complaints, you miserable creature. You are nothing. Among nothingness, you are less. The insignificant about you mean more than you ever will.”

“Then let me go.” He heard himself say.

And something struck him. A whip, it felt like, but thorny and reeking of earth. It lashed him on the tender parts of his ankles, and he stumbled forward, crying out.

“Mortal. You have little chance left now. You are in my house, and I am supreme here. You will do this task for me.”

Mark started coughing. The nightmare woman looked down at him with eyes that were echoes of candles and not eyes, with wrinkles that were branches and skin that was a stretching tarp strung up from the skins of children. And Mark coughed again. But he coughed louder, and longer. He forced himself to cough, and not to stop coughing. And he made his coughs bigger and bolder and strove to bring up phlegm and spittle.

He kept it up as long as he could, until the coughing died down and his throat felt raw. The horror before him stared down as it had before, but grand, and hideous.

“You are a fool, mortal.”

“And you are inconsiderate. What, you trap people with empathy? Shouldn’t they trespass somehow? Shouldn’t there be some kind of moral to the pain you inflict?” His ankles were throbbing.

“I am not a servant to the laws of man,” said the child-skin face. It began to bend around him, to make a room of weirdly stretched eyes and a snaggle-tooth grimace that stretched zipper-like into a maw that was night and darkness. The room spoke all around him now,

“You and your kind pretend at kindness, but all that you do is to serve your sole selves. You left that little desk to stop me, to end my fit, to fix a problem, not for anyone but yourself. You complained bitterly all the way to me, I can feel it in your heart, Mark, and throughout the dreams that rang around your mind as you opened that door. You are no better than I, mortal. But you, worthless thing, you have no power here. You have only to serve me now, to serve me or to die.”

And the nightmare was complete. The maw practically engulfed him, and Mark simply thought to himself, “This is ridiculous.”

“Will you bring me the child’s heart?”

The voice in the back of his head cried out again, ‘do not bargain.’

And Mark said “no.”

——————

The old woman rose from her desk, wound her way back to the cubicle where her papers lay. She looked over her emails and the forms she had been filling out ever so diligently. She liked it here in the library, working peacefully. At home, the power was… infrequent, and the internet spotty. She sat down, cracked her knuckles, and typed out the last five percent of her documents. She sent out her work notice so that that young Todd in budgeting would give her that Ken doll smile he had, and maybe that little hussy Susan would stop going on about her over-achieving niece, Henrietta whatever. Honestly, this old body should have retired years ago, she thought to herself.

Picking up her papers, she sauntered out of the library. Given over to fat though she was, she could still saunter for a bit.

The raven haired old woman in the patterned shawl waited a half hour for the bus, massaging her old legs and her throat. She felt like she had hacked up a lung. Honestly, it was getting tough being as old as she was.

Then with a squeak and squeal of tires, the local bus pulled up, hissed open its doors, and the crone ascended slowly, muttering to herself about the stairs on the bus.

She sat down near the front and looked out the window.

In the reflection on the glass was the face of a man whose name she couldn’t remember, but whom she somehow knew. This face was neither overly dumpy nor particularly thin, in no way muscular or handsome, and poorly shaved so that it came off patchier than it ought to.

The face made a fog – or was it her breath? Wasn’t it her breath?

As she stared, the writing appeared in front her. That face, and the phrase it wrote, which it never stopped writing, would haunt her and taunt her for the rest of her days. It simply wrote, and ever kept writing,

‘How dare you.’