Stalk City

    Mushroom towers filled the sky with chimneys of smoke and spores, they lit up at night and cast shadows on the surrounding sea during the day, outlined with a reflected golden light. Giant aphids leap between them, carrying the working folks to work and the rest elsewhere.

The clouds were made of discarded orange peels left by a careless deity, rainwater dripping from their edges, creating a crystalline curtain at the edges of the mushroom stalk city. On the roof of one particular stalk, a frog puffs on a long, golden pipe, his pupils chasing one another around his head. He is in the midst of having a stroke, but doesn't know it yet. Will he find out any moment now? Will he ever find out?

A small toy followed him throughout his life, leaving bits of its stuffing behind at intervals. One of those now wafted on the breeze in front of his face, and he felt a deep kinship with this lump of stuffing that triggered no memory in his conscious mind, only left him puzzled at this feeling that had overcome him. Both the feeling itself and the resulting puzzlement were immediately erased by his stroke, which ended having done very little damage. His eyes went back straight in his head and he resumed smoking his pipe, admiring his own image reflected in the polished gold, admiring the way the smoke drifted from between his cracked and aging lips. When the wind picked up, it carried waves of dew from the crystalline falls accros the city, leaving a thin film on everything. He took his longest finger and wiped a streak of this moisture off of the pipe, so that he could continue gazing at his own reflection. His moustache had grown long with the years, longer than he ever remembered seeing it before. Long enough to devour him whole if the inclination took it, and he could only trust that it wouldn't, after all the time they had spent together, both good years and bad.
    He got up slowly from his seat on the roof and slid down toward an open window. The dew made this easy, but made ceasing difficult. The bristles on the end of his toes served to grip the window frame and carry him back into his kitchen, where mountains of pots and pans, never cleaned, never considered, never looked at since their use were overtaking all that he held dear. The living room was much kinder, containing by far his favorite rug in the known universe, a rug which he had kept for his entire life for being his favorite and was showng its age just as much as he was, which was now the only thing he loved about it, as all else that had made it great was worn away with time, just as he felt his own best qualities blotted out by wrinkles and callouses, and the many scars stacked upon scars that served as proof of the many experiences he could no longer remember, yet still made him who he was.
    On the wall of this living room, was a spider web, occupying the center of a twine hoop hanging from the ceiling for this very purpose. The spider had long since passed away, but he did his best to preserve the lattice it had woven. He had never liked spiders, and it served him to have something scarier than his own nightmares to catch and eat them as they drifted out his nostrils or from behind his ear drums.
He stood in the center of his favorite rug for a long moment, attempting to decide what to do, then attempting to remember what he was attempting to decide, then attempting to remember what he was attempting to remember, then giving up and making a decision anyway; which was to sit in his armchair and continue to smoke his pipe. This armchair had a plaid pattern on its back that pleased him whenever he glanced at it, which he could not now do as he was already sitting in the chair, which put the pattern firmly behind him. This distressed him so much that he stood and turned around to face the chair, gazing at the pattern while still puffing away, wiping the last of the dew drops from the pipe bowl. Only after a lengthy stare did he permit himself to sit back down, proud of having made and executed on a decision so decisively in such a short span of time, and also proud of the chair itself, which was not quite so old as the rug, but still felt like a long-time companion that had seen the dew rush in the window with the afternoon light for countless afternoons in this single stalk in the sky where he resided with his rug and his frog and his spider and all the other things that comforted an old chair on its last legs.
    "The badgers are at it again," he said, and realized as he said it that it was true and that he was commenting on the racket outside. He went back to the window to see them crowded aboard an undersized zeppelin outside, hooting, hollering, carrying on.
    "Hey there old man!"
    He shut the window. Outside it they continued carrying on, carrying themselves away on their zeppelin toward more open windows and the people who stood at them ready to observe their carrying on, who could be freely called to if they so chose, which they of course would. The dew was invigorating, splitting the light of the sunset into a million rainbows cast on the sides of the stalks, across the material of their balloon, even into the backs of their own eyes, where it was stored away as a burning sensation, fueling their carrying on to even greater heights than it could ever hope to reach unaided. The next window belonged to a giraffe. She was a prime hey there candidate, as it would take her several minutes to retract her neck and head back through the window, during which the crew could deliver countless hey theres, and still have time to deliberate about which hey there had been the greatest, the most glib, the most friendly, the most rich with meaning of all the hey theres. This sent them into a dew-fueled frenzy that lasted hours beyond the disappearance of the giraffe head, so carried on and away were they that they began to hey there at each other instead; eventually forming a rift down the middle of the zeppelin separating into two camps of Hey Therers: those who believed that a true Hey There consisted of a Hey There, and those who believed that a Hi There was also acceptable. The resulting pogrom lasted until long after sunset, and saw nearly half of the crew cast overboard, to their demise or at least to a long swim home in the dark.
    When night set in, the mushroom tops retracted like umbrellas, the zeppelins went to ground, and the only sound was the perpetual white of the crystalline falls all around them, even the wind having gone to sleep.
    Yet the giraffe was still awake by the light of her lamp, he neck coiled upon itself against the ceiling, her face pressed toward her angled writing desk where she scribbled furiously the events of the day, including the protracted Hey There Event and the resulting civil war, which she had observed through the frosted pane of her window, careful to stay out of sight and see the badgerers in their natural habitat so that she could later record and analyze their strange behavior. This involved a cup of tea and whatever contraption might allow a hoofed animal to hold onto a pen long enough to take down page on page of notes in immaculate cursive. When the sun finally rose, she found the strength to stop and discovered that her eyes refused to close, so she brewed another cup of tea and turned them toward the window to see if she could burn them into sleep with the burst of light that was about to break from the horizon.

All good things

    Sweet Lethe, sing to me the glories of empire! The fingers of Corinea touch the shores of distant lands and even soon the bottom of the ocean. And I see it all in the cloud of smoke pushed between my lips, intersecting with the lamplight that so feebly fills the back room of my haunt.
    On this night, Banderkrugge is a city on the edge of the sea, and the edge of revolution. Ash drifts out toward the water as the lights begin to flicker on, drawn out by a vivid purple from the setting sun. Lightning in the clouds to the South, and the wind yet to decide where to carry it. A stench hangs always in the air, the soot people drifting between the brick and cement from which they sprouted.
    There is a tease of grit on his tongue as he makes his way through the alleys. The dockyards lie below the rest of the city due to the steep slope near the shore. The grit takes on a briny bite, and the wind picks up. The main roads are brick and old and crowded with traffic. Most of the streets are only wide enough for a bike or two. These streets are slowly accruing graffiti, more with each day he makes his way down to the docks. Prominent among the imagery is a grinning fellow with half his teeth knocked out, sometimes with a single hand protruding from his head giving a thumbs up. Supposedly a caricature of one Smiley D, kingpin of the Smileys, who was brutally beaten by a detachment of Trasheaters - rivals who'd been encroaching on Smiley turf near the docks. The missing teeth started showing up in tags as a dig, then the Smileys had reclaimed it as a badge of pride. But now the number of teeth in the smile was steadily decreasing month-by-month, as the Trasheaters grabbed more and more dockside turf. But so far, Smiley D is still smiling.
    Just this morning, Harry was on his way to visit the home of an old professor of his. Eustace Krant had his front gate roped off, plainclothes and uniformed officers wandering the grounds. They said he'd hanged himself. An inspector stood with Harry by the fence, sipping coffee, looking sleepy. "These things happen," he said, stifling a yawn. He handed Krant's suicide note to Harry with a mumbled, "I'm sure he'd want you to have this." An odd thing to say, considering the inspector had no idea who Harry was.
    Harry unfurled the paper right there in the morning mist and read. It was just a single line across the top of the page, in flawless cursive:
  
    *I woud like it to be known that I am very disappointed with all of you.*

    Banderkrugge is a city on fire. The chimneys of Findley Quarter are alight for the evening, hundreds of carbon streams bending toward the coast and joining the pillars of the foundries and shipyard to form a vast trunk of spent matter rising into the sky's foliage, dispersing amongst the stormclouds; their undersides glowing with the sun's last rays. Further up the coast, a bakery is burning to the ground, already half-demolished by a rocket attack , spreading its warmth to the surrounding neighborhood. A piece of the war has made its way home. It smells delicious. Henry sucks the acrid sweet of burning brioche deep into his lungs and runs a hand across the brickwork at the corner. The docks are only two blocks to his left, the rowd of The Horrible Hag already audible over the screeching of the gulls. Someone is banging a drum. In the opposite direction, a scream, cut off halfway through its arc.
    Banderkrugge is a city of garbage. There is a great quantity of cannage in the gutters. Cans are the new thing and they are everywhere. Soup cans, oil cans, soda cans, cans of processed fish guts, canned hotdogs with grinning pigs on them. Crumpled, torn, pristine, tossed to the roadside. Piles of rotting garbage stacked next to the actual trash cans. Harry smokes profusely to kill off his nose buds.
    Banderkrugge is seeing a recent surge in cigarette sales. Cigarettes are also new. They're like cigars only smaller, cheaper, easier to produce, easier to consume. All things that have resulted in universal popularity. Smoking them is a mild, repeatable event; an excellent distraction from the garbage, an excellent complement to the faceless piles of bricks.
    Banderkrugge is a brutalist/modernist paradise. A history of architecture abounds, but growing up through and around it, the manufactories, the boarding houses without visage sprout and encroach like stone ivy scaled upward a thousand fold. Banderkrugge is made of brick and cement and an increasing quantity of iron. Iron comes from Elsewhere, more and more of it every day. The denizens, like Harry, who are not involved in the iron imports industry are blind to it, but not to the change it elicits in the landscape. The shapes themselves have morphed to match the material: twisting, elongating, rounding, adding additional stories with new methods of construction. Most especially, the smokestacks have increased in height.
    Everyone in Banderkrugge will have a knife buried in the back of his neighbor. Harry already has his knife, just in his pocket for now. It is still shiny. It makes a satisfying snikt when he presses the button on the handle. He feels like a larger man when he has it, and like he's in the right neighborhood, which is why he bought it to begin with. One day, he will hurt someone who does not deserve it, just as he will not deserve the hurt done to him.
    All things flow into Banderkrugge and do not leave. Banderkrugge is the city that consumes all, but itself above all else. It gorges on the smorgasbord of the world yet remains emaciated. It has its share of tapeworms:
    Banderkrugge is the city of towers. Iron and steel allow for previously impossible heights, cloisters for the moguls of the iron industry to stand smoking their cigarettes and dumping their garbage, feeling nothing but the slight pressure of future knives buried in their spines.
    Banderkrugge is the city of business.
    Banderkrugge would turn its citizens into gold if it could.
    Banderkrugge is the home we all wish to escape from. Harry will maintain, as everyone does, that he lives in the greatest city on Earth, but when the chance comes to be anywhere else, he will take it.
    Banderkrugge will be bombed into plasma. All things flow into Banderkrugge, including the war. The sweet ash of the bakery fire is not the first Harry has drawn into his tobacco-stained lungs, and it is far from the last.
    Banderkruggians are lovers of music and imported traditions. The Scene has just recently discovered the scales of the Southlands, adapted to the local chord progressions, then run through amplifiers. The sound makes its way into every locale, a zeitgeist wave that Harry and his mates ride the crest of. Dark songs of fire, blood, gutters, and sticking knives in their neighbors.
    Banderkrugge is the world's leading arms manufacturer. Having recently surpassed its Southern rivals, as the new manufactories glow and burn at full capacity. Automatic weapons, shiny artillery pieces, brand new floating fortresses lining up to be christened before being sent to the ocean floor.
    Banderkrugge is the center of art and literature about how terrible Banderkrugge is, funded by Banderkrugge. The new music, the academics who write a novel before hanging themselves, all of it consumed by dock punks and iron moguls alike; nodding their heads, thinking yes, we are indeed awful.
    If we were to flatten Banderkrugge's resonances onto a plane, we would see a map of the corridors of power. Boulevards extend out beyond their end and across the sea, becoming shipping lanes, becoming spheres of influence, becoming economic zones, becoming hegemonies of exchanges both cultural and violent, handshakes and salvoes. If we return along this axis, we rush down the boulevard and then between the crevices of an ontological framework - Harry, a self-described Ontologist, whose chief contribution to the discipline thus far is the active renunciation of these axes that tie him through the city to the seas beyond. He is at this very moment undergoing an act of brutal self-containment, as the horns of the warships sinking into the blue horizon drown out the strangled scream that he barely registered. As he basks in the smell of a bakery fire and smiles back at Smiley D. As he feels the wind that hits him at the corner arrive from foreign places but touch only him and then consign itself to nonexistence. This is an ontological seminar with an attendance of one, held in the hall of the flesh, whose walls are the skin. The attendant will ask a poignant question answered by the lecturer, and they will be in agreement with one another. They agree that they smell something quite nice, and are content to confine themselves to the minutiae of this wonderful smell.
    Pull back slightly and we can see the exterior structure recognized as Harry, a crew cut young man in the act of cultivating his beard, failing but persevering. An act that summarizes the totality of our Henry quite well, and I think he would even agree with me on this point. He wears a patterned flannel shirt and aging trousers. He keeps a pack of smokes rolled up in his sleeve and one tucked into his belt. He knots his shoes improperly, and strolls in a particular manner to avoid stepping on his own shoelaces. Unusually white teeth mark him out as a stranger to the district, though a missing canine tells us he is more of an expat than a tourist. He goes on smiling at the bakery fire and the warships and the tragedy of the Smiley gang and makes his way on down to the Horrible Hag, where a different sort of seminar is just getting started.
    The Hag was named by its owner, Caxton Brick, after his wife, a lovely woman by all accounts, who sleepwalked off the edge of the jetty one night. Her body was never recovered, and the neighborhood told tales of Jenny Brick, the horrible hag, who would drag drunken sailors to their death in the small hours of night, usually with some jokes about her fidelity thrown in. Caxton, being of a darker humor than the jokers, named his tavern after her when it opened. Indeed, the carving over the door was a loving rendition of Jenny beneath the waves, chained to the sea floor by kelp, her hair caught in a current. Just above it, an arc of neon gas proclaimed The Horrible Hag. The one-story building looked out onto the concrete geometries of the port, harboring the leviathans of the shipping lanes, pincushioned with masts and crates and cannonry. Windows foggy with moisture and old grease flank the door beneath the sign which Harry pushes open with the first two fingers of his right hand.
    He enters to the evening, the last light of day having been pushed out to sea by the coast, leaving a dark warmth within the Hag, making its own lines through the cigarette smoke and kitchen steam. Caxton himself appears without having moved from his position behind the bar, somehow cleaning two glasses at once with no supporting surface but his own palms. He is glancing at the drummer on the little corner stage bashing his half-open high hat. Caxton, or Cat to his patrons because it's easier to say, keeps his hair in a ragged fan at the far end of his head that curves down into a massive set of mutton chops that have turned the color of goose down near the tips. Cat rotates his mutton chops to bring his eyes in line with the opening door and half-grins at Harry. "Harry! Pull up a stool, Harry. Shake off the brine air and that stupid look on your face. How's the world of Ontology?"
    "Ever-present."
    "Harhar. You useless bastard. Sticking around for the noise tonight?"
    "Of course."
    Cat points with his pint glasses at the drummer. "Dank wants to murder that set."
    "So I heard. From down the block." They sit and listen to Dank stabbing the ride symbol until his drumstick splits down the middle. "What's his problem?"
    "Dunno, but he's been at it all day."
    "Ah."
    "Maybe he needs an Ontologist?"
    Henry is too poised for his pint to respond. It becomes his hand when Cat sets it down, and the frost on its surface becomes him. He moves like a melting polar cap between the tables to the stage, where Dank is using his remaining drumstick like a knife. He stabs it right into the snare, pushing its head against the blister on his thumb.. He pulls the stick out and examines it, tosses it aside, and gets busy replacing the snare head. "How's it hangin' Dank?"
    "I'm good." He is clearly not. But Harry knows Dank is a man of relative happiness. Meaning happiness for him is relative.
    "You're not. You look glum, chum."
    "Feck off." Another drumstick split, this time by sticking it through the clamps on the snare and twisting. He has extras. Dank is small and built as if he were made of amphetamines. His skin should be naturally dark but carries a dayless pallor that highlights his veins, already like rusted copper cords twisting down his forearms. His hair is buzzed, his scalp like an angry peach. Unlike Harry, he's an actual Findley local with some passing resemblance to Smiley D, though he would've been a Trasheater if he weren't tied up with the band and insulated by the Hag crowd. There's a hint of trash about his flesh, about his carriage.
    Harry shrugs and glances around the bandstand. He's not about to risk a Dank attack. The other instruments are abandoned on their stands, the guitar especially looking as if it were calling out for a friend: "Turn my shiny knobs, fret me, shred me," it says. He shrugs again. "I don't know how to play you, baby." "You could learn," it says. Nah. Harry's more interested in the cold leeching into his fingers from the pint glass, that wonderful energy. "The man who does pick you up will play you right." There is a soft sobbing behind him as he turns back to take a seat at the bar.
    Cat is still scrubbing glasses two at a time. "So. What's Dank's deal?"
    "Who knows? Fuck 'im." Harry chugs and taps the pint on the polished wood of the counter. There's already another waiting for him. "What's the word, Cax?" The bar is wet, and he can see his face in it, indistinct as if from a distance. He grins and likes the look of his missing tooth.
    Cat spits in his old glass and gets to scrubbing. "Rocket landed uptown this afternoon. Heard it was a bad one."
    "Yeah, well it smells delicious."
    "14 dead, said the radio."
    "Someone oughtta napalm those continental fucks into paste."
    Caxton laughed. "We already do." He stows the glasses under the bartop, rests his elbows on it and starts stroking the tips of his mutton chops. "Say, Harry, I don't think you believe that, right? Belief isn't your style."
    Harry chugs again, but has to stop halfway to take a breath and make room for the bile in his throat. "Just parroting, I guess. It's fun to say, though."
    "Yeah. Fun."
    The crowd is crowding in now; the locals, the tourists, the sailors on leave, the sailors still waiting for the yards to christen the floating fortress that takes them away from here. Occasional pilots who like to wear their uniform scarves over a leather vest, or keep a pair of goggles hanging around the neck. Or the other sort, who just drape themselves with army surplus, confused vestments for a nameless religion that hasn't received its commandments yet.
    This Dank fellow is still at the drumset, waiting for his time to shine. He's been there all day, taking steady infusions from Caxton, but mostly just playing. People come and go, some look at him some don't, but he's got a barricade between himself and them, one that makes loud noises if he needs to drive them away. He begins to sing, the new lyrics that he and Harry wrote last week:

    dead creepy baby dolls
        piled against the wall!
    taran-tula monsters
        waiting in the hall!
    tell me how much longer
        you will stall!
    a minute or an hour in this room
    la la la la la la la laaaaaaaa!!!

    I can hear him from the back room. If I had to guess, I'd say the song is about me. But I'm too high to register any meaning in the noise beyond whatever is inherent in the vibrations themselves.

The Fortuitous Arrival of Mr. Feathers

    Gerald Feathers stared at the raindrops running down his window, watching them change pathways at random and sometimes split into smaller pieces. He watched them and felt that their ramblings were a suitable conceit for a life of mistakes such as his, but felt also that he was incapable of learning anything from them in his current mindset.
    It was mid-afternoon, and his apartment was partially lit by its few remaining lightbulbs, the rest of it the terrible grey of English Rain; a comfortable shade of depression. He had even lit a couple candles on the window sill. There was something about fire that did his soul good, whether it was in small or large portions. One of the candles was shaped like the Buddha, though it held no spiritual significance for him. Just something he had accumulated, along with the other objects littering his home. It was a large but old apartment. It could be large because it was old. And it could be old because it was overpriced. It could be overpriced because his family owned it. Or rather its price was priced accordingly. The outlier was himself, living in a place over his price by birthright. Gerald felt no particular gratitude at this fact; only guilt at his lack of gratitude.
    He pressed his hand to the window pane to feel the cold outside. It refreshed him momentarily, a wave of energy that passed straight up his arm and then out through the top of his head, gone in moments, leaving behind the same lethargy as before. He could see himself, his edges lit from behind, in the window whenever the lightning stopped. His hair was light to dark brown depending on how much sunlight it absorbed. It was getting long, frizzy and curly by turns as if calling out for attention. He was also cultivating a moustache: a lighter shade and styled like an old paintbrush. He hated the moustache, but kept it anyway, on principle. What principle, exactly, was unclear.
    He turned back to the dining room and wandered toward the kitchen. Along with a living room with its own fireplace, these constituted the bottom floor. Upstairs was an unnecessarily long hallway that led only to his bedroom. He stood in the kitchen for a moment and wondered if he was hungry. A cup of tea sat forgotten on the counter, next to his abandoned coffee mug. He took a sip of one then the other, then wandered into the living room. The hearth had been cold for some time. Two Christmas stockings still hung above it. He took one of them down and threw it into the fireplace, promising to burn it at some point in the future. The other one had his name on it: G. Feathers. Impersonal for such a personal item. He reached inside and pulled out a small bottle of whiskey. It too was abandoned, and held no spiritual significance. Still, he broke the seal and took a couple swigs. It made him feel disgusted, with the drink or with himself, perhaps with the general concept that his act represented. Whatever the root, it exacerbated his tiredness, increased his nausea. He moved to the card table at the front of the room, took a drink from a glass of water he found there. Next to the glass was three quarters of a poem he had written. It was a bad poem, he thought, and he made sure not to reread it. A window of the same form as the one in the dining room stood here, looking out onto the same street, behind an entirely different pattern of raindrops, but indistinguishable to him.
    This was when the thunder started, preceded by the lightning. Distant at first, he watched and heard the strikes approach their own rumblings. Each time the increasing dark lit up, the streaks of rain turned black against their background, pools of ink oozing through the air outside. With the next strike, one of the pools appeared to take a human form, standing between two parked cars across the street. Even though it was only a silhouette, something about its shape was familiar to him. A trick of the mind. She would not be standing in the street outside his apartment, nor anywhere else. The shape was still there with the next strike. By the third, it was gone.
    He completed his circle by stepping back into the dining room. One glance out the window, then he went on to the kitchen, again wondering if he were supposed to eat something. When he opened the fridge, there was a knock at his door. "Who could be calling at this hour?" he said, then realized that it was only 3 in the afternoon.
    He opened the door, and there, with the rain still pelting his back, was a man of his own height. The man had long hair of his own color, frizzy and curly by turns, like his own. The man had a longer moustache than his, waxed to points, and must've been at least 20 years his senior. "Greetings, good sir," he said, doffing an unusual hat. "You don't know me, but I'm you from--" Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by the appearance of a horrid beast whose entire head was a round orifice full of eyes and surrounded by two rows of fangs tearing in circles like chainsaws, throwing spittle, accompanied by a scream of myriad pitches, all dissonant. Still screaming, and eliciting a similar scream from its victim, the beast drove its chainsaw teeth into the top of the newcomer's head, straight through his hat and into his skull. The fellow was still looking at Gerald while this happened, but his eyes began to vibrate and revolve as the teeth scrambled his brains. A crash and a sound he would later describe as a 'schlup' came from next door. The screams mingled until Gerald couldn't tell whether they were coming from his own open mouth. Gore spewed out across his face and bathrobe, into the teacup he had carried with him. Making pleased grunting noises as it chewed up the head of the man who was now very dead, the creature pretended to eat even though there was nowhere for the flesh to go. It gored and munched, and scooped hunks of brain between its teeth, all of which smeared across its collection of eyes and then slid out and onto the ground. Meanwhile, its ink-black skin seemed to be rearranging itself, a smooth surface that became hexagonal scales that bounced through the rainbow, streaks of pink, then neon orange and green and purple, then back to pink, fading into the original black as spines and hairs arranged themselves before disappearing.
    Having destroyed the upper half of the strange man's head, the beast decided it was finished, dropped the body, and turned its eyes/mouth toward Gerald. Gerald backed up slightly, careful not to trip over his own feet, and tried to say, "Excuse me." As he did, yet another scream joined the scene, in the form of a striped orange cat, of all things, that lept out of the night and latched onto an inky shoulder, clawing and biting. The  horrid creature, receiving a taste of its own medicine, flung its gangly arms in the air and hollered, looking a bit like an amateur mime acting out a death scene.
    A gunshot announced the bullet that drove into the space where the creature's ear should have been. A wave of orange cascaded out from the point of impact and across its skin, followed by an explosion of fire that sent its head flying off in every direction. Eyeballs and inky gore joined the brains on Gerald's face and collecting on the front of his robe. He dropped the teacup and continued to soil himself.
    As the already stinking corpse dropped to the ground, the orange cat landed on its feet and pranced proudly through Gerald's front door, still holding a hunk of shoulder meat in its mouth. Before he could parse its appearance as anything more significant than another cloud of particles drifting in the aether, another lightning strike announced a new visitor at the still open door: in all ways identical to the original caller, except for the smoking rifle balanced on his shoulder. "Greetings, good sir!" he said. "You don't know me, but I'm you from the future." With a reassuring smile, the fellow attempted to push the two bodies off the stoop with his boot, but gave up when they refused to move. "Sorry about the interruption." He grabbed Gerald's limp hand and shook. "I would not suggest you call me by my given name. Why don't I go by Mr. Feathers?"
    "Zzzzzuuhhhhhmmm?" Was the only noise Gerald could manage. He was still urinating, had already shit himself twice.
    "Yes, well...." said Mr. Feathers. "Quite."
    This caused Gerald to nod.
    "Shall we?" Mr. Feathers marched across the threshold, wiping his gore-laden boots on the rug and heading for the living room. Gerald shut the door and stood for a moment, wondering if the rain would let up before morning.

garrett from the sea

    It was at the midpoint of a storm that I finally washed up on the shores of the Hudson with all the other flotsam, the waves high but erratic enough to keep me from washing back down again, to give me time to stand up and rake the river vomit from my hair before moving up toward the asphalt that marked the edge of a certain kind of safety.
    It's not even especially that it had to be the Hudson instead of any other shore in the world, but it was that that place had become a stand in for The City, the concept of the center of human life and human degradation. The antithesis of the slow suburban death that still clogged my arteries and gnawed at the edges of my brain. This was a place of life and thought and passion, where even the people trying to kill themselves kept on living, propped up by the vitality of the streets soaked in rain and plasma. I mean, that's how I thought of New York because it's how the world conceives it, and so how it birthed from my mind to the world in an endless hyperbolic, kaleidoscopic loop. Admittedly, I was on the wrong side of the river, but it wasn't a far swim to Manhattan. Then again, it was late enough in the year that the weather was turning cold. I could see myself freezing before I reached the far shore. I was halfway there already. I would instead make my start here where I'd coalesced, still in the body but not yet its heart. That was okay, the light still reached this far, just that the shadows were deeper, the shouts and screams more distant. It was already the halflight before the temperature drop, the bridgelights igniting, the foghorns calling out to be heard. I found myself drifting up the street with all the other trash, the stuff that was dry enough to be lifted on the breeze.
    Having decided that, as a character, i was going to embrace and live by the stream of consciousness that ruled my universe, the first place i dropped into was a bar. Because they were as always the first thing that occurred to me when nothing else occurred to me, and they were the source of half the light and noise of the city, and the only place to welcome in a seamonster like me, with nowhere else to go. The places where only folks with business in those places went were already closing down for the evening. The bar was the place where the only business in the place was to be there in that place, so that's where I was.
    This place was called The Horrid Hag, and had itself a nautical theme that somehow seemlessly incorporated lava lamps with spotlights behind them. There were fishing nets hooked around the walls and ceiling, appearing in the haze to have been fished directly from the river and still containing a multitude of fish parts, gasping mouths and staring eyes and fins reaching out for help in their last moments before their demise was immortalized. The lamps cast bulbous shadows over them that looked now like clouds at night, now like bubbles seen from the ocean floor. The bartender was a head-hairless man who had groomed a massive and nautical beard. A pirate's beard. The rest of him was neat, suspenders and dress shirt, a few immaculately combed hairs on his head, arranged across the scalp as if painted on or glued in place. This man's gaze took in my sorry state, the salt in my hair, the crustaceans in my pockets; and began to open his mouth to throw me out. That's when the largest woman I had even seen clapped me on the shoulder and said to him, "Gary! Another round for my friend here." Her index finger alone was the size of my forearm. Gary nodded you got it, and I read the first thing off of the chalkboard behind him. He placed it in front of me with a dead look on his face. It was frothy like sea spray, but tasted a good bit better. I took a sip and the giant woman who had rescued me patted me on the head like a stray dog. "Say hello to the crew." The crew looked at me with the same eyes. "What's your name?" "I don't remember," I said. "You're Gary," said one of them. Gary overheard. "To hell with that," he said, and spat on the floor. "All right, you're Garrett." They all nodded, including the large woman and myself (I realized). Gary shrugged and tended his bar. "Where you from?" "The sea," I said, without thinking. Everyone nodded. I looked like I was from the sea. I got another pat on the head and a toast to Garrett From the Sea.

you're welcome to keep this

vomit cadavers strewn all over
past the edge of the curtains
in my mind every curtain is the color of a heartbeat

arms flailing fingers grasping at the ceiling
like inflatable hoses
and a thick layer of slime coating
everything pink like frosting
the teeth seemed to be
hiding somewhere
there were none left
perhaps a new head was being assembled just out of sight

if in fact it was i assumed
it was now to follow me around town
for the rest of my days
accusing black eyes
a nose turned up at an
unnatural angle
the hacked together teeth grinding against each other

but the truth was
i had no memory of it
no memories left at all
only a few dreams that couldn't possibly
have belonged to me
they didn't match what remained

i knew from photographs
that there was a strange young man
who looked like a son i would've had
and i remembered the night in question as a story he might tell

but i'd never had a son
or known anyone who looked like me except me

only a certain mood could set me in touch with that stranger
a certain level of otherness
accessible through
disciplined alchemy

then it was like I'd been asleep for a decade
and suddenly awoke as this
old man
who would at any moment retake possession of his body
once the elixir wore off

what could i do with these few moments of
befuddled consciousness
except nothing

Now let me slip back into whatever dream I was having please thank you.
You're welcome to keep this withered shell.
If you like.

it was early in the spring

    It was early in the spring of 1864 that Aleister Crowley put up his feet in the leatheriest of the leather chairs in my drawing room, still weighted heavily with the tools of his trade: a motley collection of ropes, hooks, ice picks, hand axes, regular axes, lanterns, pots, pans, and several of the beards one only obtains in the Wild Lands. I think he had been somewhere in the Indies, but I'd forgotten to ask. He was gaunt beneath his curly, sun-kissed hair and his skin appeared to be a single human-shaped callus.
    "How do you feel?" I said. The spring rain - still frozen - beat softly on my roof and leaked in through the casements.
    He puffed up and then exhaled. "At peace. You should go, Jack. Before you get too old."
    "Sure. But what about the apothecary?"
    He laughed. "Well, you'd have to close it of course. Life calls, you know?"
    "Yes yes."
    "Surely you want something more than this." He waved at the room in an effeminate, dismissive way.
    "I expect I do."
    "What is it you want, Jack? If you didn't have the apothecary."
    "Honestly?"
    "It's me."
    "I'd kind of like to live forever."
    He cackled. "Most wouldn't say it's a calling, but I'll give it to you." He filled his pipe with a skunky weed I'd never seen before and lit up. "Well, no time like the present to start working that out. You still have your health and most of your wits left. Not a bad vessel in which to set sail for eternity."
    "I suppose I do have a few wits left to expend." He passed me the pipe.
    It wasn't long before the bookshelves began to melt. Aleister launched into a lengthy recounting of his mountaineering escapades, of which I remember little. There were frozen limbs, natives amorous and vengeful by turns [Aleister has always inspired either love or hatred in most of his interactions with other people. I was perhaps an exception to this rule, as I enjoyed his company but my armor of social indifference kept us from butting heads.], betrayals, lost comrades, and anything else that might fit neatly in the pages of a romance. I listened with characteristic skepticism, yet knew that it was all true anyway.
    I admit to a sense of the smallness of my own life, trapped in my apartments with only the detritus of my studies and trade. Much as I preferred things this way, I told Al how I wished to expand into the universe, physically if possible. He was quite positive, of course. "What you want is transcendence, right? It comes in many forms, each with many avenues of pursuit."
    I knew well what he was trying to say, and I began to map them in my head. Circuits of passage were forming, transits around an across a great sea. I filed away certain items of my own collection to refer to later that very night.

once i dug a hole

once i dug a hole
inside i found a man
his skin was made of plaster
his eyes were filled with sand

he sat upon his house
another layer down
a palace in its time
perhaps he'd lost his crown

i wanted to take him with me
just a finger or some hair
but the sand rushed back upon us
in this tyrant's tomb i share

once i lit a match
the last to find my way
when the light burned out
i heard the dead king say

up and down this street my friend
my knights drew out the crowds
whose stones did little damage
but sealed them in their shrouds

the quiet beyond did suit me
though not so much this grave
i miss the sky above my head
so flush with souls we saved

what do you do for fun
i said
he said nothing's fun
when you're dead

but i suppose i do enjoy the sand
as any dead thing must
like being hugged by
a million shining giants
all of them ground to dust