It is something to have been.

Some time ago, The Fabulous Lorraine posted a thought about being on fire.  For that, I owe her all the mangoes she can eat, ever.  Let me give you just a taste of what the poem she quotes is like:

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

 

It is, truly, something to have been.  Without it, there would be no knowing what beauty is.  So we try things, and hurt ourselves in the trying, sometimes.  We fuck up.  We do what seems right at the time.  We do what seems fun.  Whatever.  And then, we hurt.

So how does it reflect on an author, when that author is willing to hurt, to injure, to maim, to torture, to kill a character? Or to make up whole new things worse than death, just to do to them?

I will do terrible, awful things to the people I write or write about.  I am a bad person.  I feel no remorse for forcing them to live through things that no sane human being would survive.

It is something to have been.

Who am I, to deny them freedom?  Freedom of choice comes with freedom of consequence.  You can’t have one without the other.  It doesn’t work.

Put it another way: these are the things they must experience, to become the people they will end up being.  Stealing their pain, their anguish, their hurt is only denying them a part of life that is true, and instructive, and necessary to form a child into… something very else.

So I will not cringe from doing genuinely awful things, to characters and readers alike.  I realized that, the day I knew I had written someone that all of us know, that all of us like, someone who had the potential to be everything and to make the world, if not entirely right, at least a vastly better place.  He had the right, the responsibility, the privilege to live and to take pleasure both in living and in making the world a better place to be.

Naturally, then, just as he realized what he might become, I murdered him.

I say it that way because it is my writing.  It is my hand holding both the quill and the sword, and I refuse to shy away from being responsible for the genuinely terrible things I’ve done.

But if I hadn’t murdered him, nothing would be the same.  He needed to die, both for himself and for everyone around him.  So at least it wasn’t a truly pointless death.

I don’t mourn him, because he still lives in my head, where time is whatever I want it to be.  Even if that weren’t the case, I’d still have murdered him.  It was a painful task, one that needed doing.

Truly, it is something to have been.  To deny my characters the right to fuck up, to get hurt, to be strange, to learn by mistakes – to me, that denies them the right to be people, and not puppets.

One more quote, then I will stop:

The puppet thinks
it’s not so much
what they make me do
as their hands
inside me
that hurts.

– Charles De Lint

La loba

I go out into the dark desert all the time now.  I still keep track of when it should be her time, la loba‘s time, just as the sun begins to fall deeply behind the mountains, taking its rest.  But when there is no sun anymore, what does it matter?  I go, and I go, and I go.

No supplies, no packs, no animals for this traveler.  Stepping from the scrub out into the cutting wind that howls across the desert, seeking invisible prey, I go.  I pray that if I am lost enough, desperate enough, last enough, la loba will hear my cries and take pity on me.  If I am lucky, she will sing me back together, so I can be a whole creature again.  If I am very, very lucky, she will sing flesh onto my bones, so I can be what I once was; so the wind will be forced to keen around me, not through me, and I can go home.

Because, of course, I can never go home unless I am a person again.  Everyone knows this.

 

I have gone out of the safety of the forest and into the desert a thousand times, a million times.  Every time I wake, I gather legs underneath me and walk.  It is the only task I have left.  I must find la loba, or convince her to find me, so that I may be whole again.

Sometimes I find creatures, torn and left naked and fleshless in the sand.  They are sad, pitiful things, and if I do not help them, the sand will eat even their bones, so nothing is left.  So I will hold myself this way and that, making the wind sing through me, and let them come together again, and be something whole, if not quite the same.  They say thank you, la loba.  I tell them, over and over, that I am not la loba, and please will they put in a kind word for me if they see her.  And they put their heads to the side, thinking I am crazy, and say yes, yes, of course.

I have not found anyone to help for a very long time.  It is lonely and alone, in the desert, but I pass the time learning the song the wind is screaming.  Maybe, if I can find la loba, she will give me ears to understand the wind.  Will I warn its prey, or help it hunt?  I do not know.

 

There is a place, on the far side of the keep, where the wind is loudest and nothing grows.  The sand is bold and carefree there, lapping right up to the foot of the sharp mountain stone.  I twist my ribs, my arms, and convince the wind to sing  a little fire onto the sand; just a few flames, to warm me and to tell the dark where I am.

Soon I hear footsteps in the dark sand, and a sliding noise.  Who would be out here, in the barest part of forever?  Who would come here but me?  I only spend time here when I have almost given up, and I am thinking of letting the sand eat my bones where no one will find them.

“Come, child,” rasps a voice like two wooden sticks out of the dark, “let an old woman share your fire.”

Shocked is not the word for it.  There is no word strong enough.  “Of course, lady,” I say politely, bobbing my head.  “What is mine is yours.”

She comes shuffling out of the dark, dragging a canvas sack that is gray with age and almost empty.  She is chuckling, a hollow sound like water in the back of a cave.  “It seems to me that what is mine is yours, also.”

“How do you mean, lady?  I would take nothing from you that was not given freely.”  I am afraid, now.  This search is all I have left; her mercy all I have to hope for.  What have I taken from her?  “If you think I have taken something of yours, please, have my apologies.  I will give it back, if I can, and do anything in my power to make amends.”

“How does one make amends for the theft of a name, child?  They call you la loba in the wild places, now.  They hope for your mercy in the dark.  You did not take it, but it is yours now, and no argument.  They know me not, hope for me not, but your mercy is their prize.”  She chuckles again, full of merriment.  “You are the only one left who hopes for me, and I came to see you to find out why.”

“Well… well, because, la loba, that is why!  Because, I beg you, sing me to life again, so I can be free and whole!”

“Who teaches the sand to shift?  Who teaches the wind to sing?  Not I, child, not I.  I came to find you, and to seek also your mercy.”

“M-mercy, la loba?  What can something like me do for you?”

“SING, child!  You know the way of it.  You see these bones creaking together, and you know how to build me a new life out of the sand that eats everything.  Sing, so you can have my sack, and we can both be free.”

 

There was nothing to say.  What to do when la loba, keeper of my dreams, comes to me as the keeper of hers?  So I twist my bones, careful, careful, because the wind cuts wild and high in this place.  She sighs like an old tree falling to rot, and collapses flat on the sand.

I am petrified, terrified that I will get it wrong, that she will be trapped and I will have no hope left.  So I keep bending the wind, squeezing it up between my ribs and out my mouth, forcing it up to a wild ululating wail of freedom and pain.

La loba‘s bones shift, and her flesh runs like water over the new shape.  A wolf, black as sand and glinting in the stars, shakes itself all over.  It dips its head to me, and lifts its muzzle to howl along with the screaming descant that the wind and I are creating together.  I feel strange, powerful, raging at the death of the world, for just a second.  Then the wolf’s howl dies away, and it runs off into the dark, invisible and soundless.

 

I do not go back to the scrub anymore.  There is no need to hide to sleep.  The sand covers me well enough when I do not want to be seen.  They still thank me, the creatures I find.  They call me la loba, and praise be to her singing.  I bid them welcome, and tell them that they owe me only one thing for rebirth.

“Tell the mountains,” I tell them.  “When you see the mountains, warn them that the wind is coming for them.”

The necessity of ruin

“He was willing to ruin himself for whatever he was doing.” – Richard Kadrey, Butcher Bird

 

“What would you pay, to do the perfect thing?  Even better, what price wouldn’t you pay, to undo the wrong thing?”  His voice was a hissing, buzzing monotone through the tracheotomy hole in his throat.

“I don’t know about all that,” the barman said, pulling a pint and setting it neatly on a coaster, five seats down.  “It’d have to be something pretty important.”

“Ah, but what *is* important?  How do you know?” He tried to chuckle, finger on the metal opening, but it just came out like angry locusts carjacking a VW bus full of bewildered robots.  “There are philosophers who will go on and on about how everything is important, or nothing is.  They’re not willing to make value judgments, for fear of being wrong.  You strike me as the same kind of man, if you don’t mind my saying so.  Value judgments are a necessity of knowing the value of living, my man.  They may make you uncomfortable, worried that other people will think you’re wrong.  Well, when you’re paying the price, you can afford to tell the people judging your judgments to fuck right off.  This ‘everything’ or ‘nothing’ or ‘I don’t know’ will be taken off into the dark and pulled apart, pieces going everywhere, before they’re willing to make a choice.”  He took a careful sip of his whisky, and grimaced with pleasure at the burn of it.

“I think you may have had enough,” the barman said, trying to be the picture of polite nonconfrontation.  The man was obviously a ranter, and there’s nothing like a drunk ranter to drive off the other custom.

“That’s something I’ve heard quite a bit in my time, you know.  That I’ve had enough.  That I should stop.  But you see, there’s still so much of me left.”  He held up his left hand, missing the two last fingers.  “Three left on that one, and all of them strong and dextrous.  Worth quite a lot, to the right person, in the right moment.  All I have to do is find that person, that moment, and give them what they need.”  His lips peeled back in a fair imitation of a smile.

“But I see what you are after, and I will give it to you.  Your level of customer is quite safe for tonight, and all future nights, from my distressing you.  Have a lovely evening.”  He set a few bills down on the bar, whisky half finished, and walked toward the door.

“Hey mister,” called the man with the pint a few seats down, as he neared the exit.  “What’s your name?”

“I’m very sorry, son.  I don’t know anymore.  I made a bad bargain for it, once upon a time.”  Again, the fair attempt at a smile.

“What’d you get for it?”

“A kiss, my man.  A kiss.  From a Lady whose name no human mouth can pronounce.  And with her kiss, I got the ability to make choices that other people won’t.  Not a good bargain at all, but no good mourning it now.”  He turned the knob, and slipped out the door with a quiet click.

Outside, he circled the building, and stepped into the dark and incredibly rank alley behind it.  She was waiting for him there, of course.  She was always waiting for him, if he went looking.

“Regretting our deal already, child?”  Her voice was the wind blowing leaves down the street, steam hissing through worn and untended pipe joints.

“Since the second I made it, ma’am, and you know it well.”  He stuck a piece of tape over the hole in his throat, and lit a cigarette with a long slow drag that whistled and leaked out into the night.

“You may stop anytime you like.  I will give you back everything you’ve given away.  No interest, even, on the loan of the ability.  I have always been generous with you, and your ingratitude will not change that.”

“And have everyone else lose what I get?  No, thank you, ma’am.  I’ll keep on, just as I am.  You’ll pardon my impertinence if it sounds like I try instruct you, as it were, but I would take great pleasure in telling you what I’ve learned, and what I keep on learning.”  He blew a smoke stream up and into the air, away from her.

“By all means, child.  It was your education I had in mind when I made you the offer.”  Can steam sound smug?  Can a wind condescend?  This one did.

“You gave me the ability.  You didn’t give me the soul to make the choices with.  And nothing I give away has even a fraction as much value to me as it does to the people I give it to.  Who am I, to steal from them in such a way?  So you can keep asking, and I will keep saying no, on until the day when I have nothing left to say no with.  And I will be proud of every scar, even though it makes me a monster.”

“Stubborn, and proud, and short-sighted.  We will see.  I will come again, and we will see.”  The sound and sight of her drifted away, leaving him alone again.

 

Well and well, he thought.  Alone is not such a bad thing.  And I can still change things.  There are worse things to be than a ruin.

Wishing well

“If wishes were water, there would be no word for thirst.” – Traditional

The wishing well

Must wish you well

For here

And ever after

The wishing well

A willing slave

Makes your wish

The master

 

They’d rented a cabin, off in the back of nowhere, because there was so much family and so much to do, but who wants to deal with any of that right now?  They’ve been married, and when you’re just married nothing else really matters at all.  So they picked a place where none of it could bother them, where they could just be with each other and stay together, pretending that time never had to come back in.

The young lady running the retreat was very polite, very kind.  She explained carefully which paths to take to find their cabin, which was all ready for them.

“As you know, we’ve piped in for running water in all the cabins, but there isn’t any electricity besides the water heater and the main heater for the cabin.  No cell signals, no televisions, no computers, none of that silliness.  Just you and your companion, until the end of the week.  Have an excellent stay, and don’t hesitate to come tell me if there’s anything you need.”  Her smile was warm as she handed them the little tag to hang on the front of their door.  “Just to show it’s occupied, you see.  We don’t really need locks out here, not when we already know each other, do we?”

 

The walk up to the cabin was steep enough to put both of them out of their breath, get the blood up and moving.  They didn’t feel the autumn snap in the mountain air at all by the time they reached the door.  It said 4, just like on their little round tab, and they hung the tab on the hook over the number, giggling to each other.

She carried him over the threshold, just because.  And they laughed, and all lit up with love, they kissed and kissed until all the breath they could share between them ran out.  Then they separated for a second, and went off to find the bedroom.  After that, well, it went about as you might think, and some things are private.

The first day went about like that, too.  There was plenty of food in the icebox, a fireplace to warm drinks when they wanted to, a stream to cool them when they didn’t.  The second day they didn’t even notice going by.  They only noticed when it was time to light the lamps. The third day, even the lamps stayed dark.

On the fourth day, one of them looked to the other and said, “Let’s go exploring, my love.  There’s all this brilliant mountain we may not see again for a while, so let’s see it while we’re here.”

“Mmmmm.”  The other one looked thoughtful, then grinned.  “Indeed, there are a lot of places to explore the possibilities of, dear love.  Let’s find all of them, and see what possibilities there are!”

 

So they went out together, just after dawn, and set off tracing the paths that wound up and down the mountain.  Most of them were clearly marked – Cabin 5, Office, Private Do Not Enter.  Some were little more than game trails.

Well, these were mostly city people, and they’d forgotten two very important things.  First, that mountain paths are not like roads; they have a life of their own, and are not obliged to keep going at all, much less the direction you expect them to go.  Second, that out in the wild places, there’s not much around that cares whether humans can see or not.  So, if you’re going to be out after dark, bring a light.  If you have no light, be sure you can find your way back to some before the sun sets.

So, of course, they started trying some of the little trails, all strewn with crunchy leaves and moss, to see where these unmarked paths of adventure would lead.  When one petered out, they’d backtrack to find the nearest turnoff, confident in their hearts that this was people country, after all, and they’d find their way back soon enough.

But soon enough was when the sun began to drop sharply behind the shoulder of the mountain, and they began to feel a little alone and worried.  They called out, but no one replied, except the forest going deadly silent around them at the noise.

 

All was not lost, though.  They did find a larger trail, one that looked beaten down by many feet, that looked as though it must lead to familiar ground.  There was a weathered, overgrown wooden sign pushed flat into the undergrowth beside the turnoff.  In a flowing, delicate hand, it said Wishing Well.

“A wishing well!  It’s perfect, my love.  And we’ll be able to find our way back from there easily, I’m sure.”

“It… has a sign, at least, even if it’s an old one.  It can’t lead us any further into nowhere than we already are.”

So off they went, hand in hand, following the trail to the Wishing Well.  It hadn’t been in the brochure, but certainly it sounded romantic and a little thrilling.

It wasn’t a long trail, and it was very clear, easy on their feet.  They were tired, and relieved at finally having found a path that was more walking than climbing.  So they walked, and rested their lungs and hearts and legs, and talked of what they would do, when they went back to the real world.  It was just beginning to feel like being back in a human-run, human-friendly kind of world would be a bit of a relief.

 

The space between one step and another, beneath two arching trees all decked in orange and gold and crimson, brought them into the clearing.  It was startlingly warm, and felt almost like summer.  The sun was hiding itself completely by now, but a fat, bright, welcoming moon gave them plenty of light.

Sure enough, right in the center of the circle of clearing, there was a well.  It was aged red brick, with no roof at all.  Just a circle of brick, with the promising burble of water chuckling to itself in the deepness. There was a long, bronze plaque on one side, scribed in with letters so old and worn that they were almost illegible.

“Oh, let’s dip our toes in, do!  It’s so warm here, and my feet ache something awful.”

“You, my love, are brilliant.  That’s just the idea we needed.”

So they shucked off boots and socks, and sat on the ledge of the well.  The water just brushed up against the tips of their toes, tickling and inviting.

 

“It is a wishing well, you know, my love.  Make a wish for yourself, so we will have something to look forward to when we go back!”

“You know wishing on wells is silly, but I suppose it can’t hurt anything.  I wish for a long, long life to spend with you.”

“Oh, you wonderful, silly creature!  I wish for all our dreams to come true, together.”

And they laughed, and held hands, and enjoyed the feel of the water soothing their tired, swollen, hot feet, gently lapping against their heels.

“You know, this isn’t such a bad game, after all.  I wish for you always to be just as lovely to me as you are, this very moment.”

“Well then, I wish for *you* always to be as close to me, in heart and in spirit, as you are right this very second!”

Laughter then, a little tinged with the tears that come from too much laughter and not a little relief that everything will, everything must turn out all right, after all.  And the water felt so delicious and cool against their legs, that who could argue?

“Ah-hah!  I know the perfect wish.  I wish for both of us to be madly, desperately, hopelessly in love with each other, just as we are now, forever and ever and ever.”

“Hmmm.  I think we can manage that.  Then I, therefore, wish for everywhere we go to be as wonderful, and as amazing, as this moment.”

 

They embraced then, and kissed, and were madly in love and gleeful with it.  Then something happened, no one knows what.  Instead of the water kissing and lapping up against their knees, something happened.  A loose brick turned, or one of them lost their balance, or they were too busy kissing and laughing to stay perched on the wall underneath them.

She slipped into the water, him reaching after her, but she went straight down under, almost as if she were pulled by a deep river current under the rock.  He called and called for her, desperate, panicking.  He was stripping off his shirt to go in after her when she came back up.

Her hair was all slick and wet, plastered back to her head, kelp decorating her delicately, just as flowers had on their wedding day.  She reached up with both hands, the peaks of her breasts just visible above the cool, dark water.

“I wish for us, my love.  I wish for us.  I wish for all our wishes to come true.”

She pulled him down gently, so gently, so she could kiss him.  His eyes went wide with shock, then glassy with cold, and he did not resist as she pulled him down into the wishing well with her.  They slipped beneath the surface, invisible and silent.

 

Miles away, there was a small clink.  The friendly young lady at the desk looked over to the end of the counter, empty only a second before.  There was a bottle of dark red wine, chill and dripping.  Beside it there lay a little round disk of wood, burned with the number 4 on it, bone dry.

The young lady smiled, a friendly and welcoming smile.

“Why, thank you, Lady.  I am pleased to have been of service.”  And she opened the wine, and poured a small libation to the dirt beside the front door.  “To your very good health.”  Then she poured herself a glass, and lounged into the chair behind the counter, sipping thoughtfully, a pleased and carnivorous delight tugging at the corners of her eyes.

Jackboot walkabout

(Title gratefully stolen from Charles Stross, in Accelerando.)

 

The zipper’s stuck.  I’m just trying to put my goddamn boot back on, and the zipper’s stuck.  If I was a superstitious asshole, I’d take that as a sign.  Instead, it just means the boy who’s supposed to clean them has been getting lazy, the last couple of years.

Once upon a time, I’d’ve kicked his ass into next month for that.  But there comes a point where I just don’t blame him, because he’s just following my example.

They tell you conquering the world is the best thing ever.  Supreme power, ultimate authority, no one to answer, everything can run perfectly, because everybody will have to listen to you.  At least, that’s what they told me.

Here’s a hint.  Anybody trying to convince you to do something that they probably could do themselves is probably selling you something.  Just a note.

Yeah, it was good, for a while.  My very own little jackboot walkabout.  Start out with a small number of men on your side and a good message to chant, make sure everybody knows you’re the rescuers, and not the conquerors.  Pretty soon it gets so they throw open the city gates when you come close, hoping you’ll stop by to take over on their way.  With a good enough lie, enough of the people will beg you to come that it would be rude not to overthrow their current government while you’re in the neighborhood.

And we kept it going good, all the way across the ocean and into places most of us had never heard of.  Keep your kit clean and your army in order to a standard they know how to meet, and want to meet so you’ll give them a nod.  It’s not all that hard, anyway anyone looks at it.

Here’s the problem.  Once you’ve saved the world from its own chaos, what do you do with it?  I mean, you’ve got a world, right?  And you establish all these rules, iron hand of the intelligent despot, all that good stuff.

Then, the fifth or seventh or tweflth or ninetieth time you’re called upon to remind them why they asked for you in the first place, and maybe put boot to ass in the process, to make a point, your zipper sticks.

So here’s my question, sitting here fighting with this damn zipper.  Is having the whole world worth having to buy another pair of boots?

I don’t know.  I just don’t.  But I do know who lives in this rabbit-maze with me, all clean tile floors and tunnels and a million places to go to ground.  I remember the voices that convinced me this was a good idea, and I think I know better the why behind the what.

The world may not be worth boots, but there are a lot of things that are done better with bare hands and feet.

Prepare a face

There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet – T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

 

Out of the pink again.  Fuck.  It’s the only thing that goes with the outfits I have planned for tonight.  I’ll have to go with the green instead, and that just doesn’t go at all.

But who cares, really?  It’s club light, and nobody is going to notice but me.  Standards?  In a strip joint?  Who am I kidding.

So I’m out of pink again, doing green and gold and all that instead.  Big flashy eyes, big flashy lips, lots of glitter and shine.  The Bills will pay for anything if it sparkles enough.

Twenty minute drive to the club, enough time to get in, change, and sit at the bar for the first shot of the night before I even have to think about telling the DJ to put my songs into the rotation.  It’s a heavy night, especially for a Friday.  Bills all over the place, most of them already half in the bag.  But hey, half in the bag means they’ll go half over budget, so great.

 

Before I talk to the boy about throwing me into the list for the runway sets, I spot My Bill.  You know, the guy you see who is just drunk enough to be stupid, but not stupid enough to get handsy.  The one who looks a little like the guys who want to date you, but has the tan line from the ring he took off.  The one who locked onto you as soon as you walked out of the dressing room, and has been trying to work up to come buy you a drink ever since.

Your Bill is your moneyman for the night, maybe longer if he’ll be a regular.  Finding Your Bill doesn’t happen too often if you’re a niche market girl like me, but when it happens it’s always a hell of a payoff.  So I sip my drink, and let him get one more in him, then go over and perch my ass on his lap.

“Hi, sweetie.  Couldn’t help seeing you watching.  You like the look of me, huh?”  I give him a wink and a smile that might be an invitation, might be a warning.

He stammers, and stares at me.  Grant you, it’s a great picture.  Fishnets, of course.  Heels, of course.  Long sleeve shirt, collar cut off, slit down to show more cleavage, hacked off right underneath the tit line.  Shorts that might be a belt if they get any smaller.  All of it in black, picked out in bright pink, details showing off the shape in all that dark.  They say pride’s a sin, but the wages of this particular sin pays my rent.

That’s not what he’s staring at, though.  He’s staring at the garter.  Well, okay, everybody does.  All us girls wear something to hang a sack on, but nobody else I’ve ever seen keeps a sheath on theirs.  He’s looking, trying to figure out if it’s a prop or not.

I stretch my lips wider, duck my head just a little, give him the little glance that tells him this is our little secret, just between me and him.  Lean in close, brushing my tits up against him.  “It’s real, sugar.”  His breath comes faster, and I know I’ve got him, hook, line, and sinker.  “I’ve got one for the stage that isn’t as sharp.  This one’s just for very private shows, as I’m sure a gentleman like you understands.”

More stammering.  His pupils are blown so wide now he might as well be stoned, even though there’s nothing else on him says he’s out of his skull on something.  Well, other than me.  This is My Bill, and I’ve got him for good.

“Very… um… private shows?”  They’re the first full words he’s said, and very sweet ones to begin with.

“Of course, sugarplum.  We have to pull the curtain to do the really interesting stuff, because otherwise too many people get nosy.  You DO understand, I know you do. ”  I give him a sweet, polite kiss, just underneath the point of his jaw.  “I’m not going to set you a price, because it’s crass to haggle about money.  I’m just going to tell you that whatever you bring with you behind the curtain with me, you’ll be getting more than your money’s worth.  This is the only time you’re going to get to go behind the curtain with me for a good long while, so make sure you know just EVERYTHING you want before you decide to come join me.  I’ll see you in a minute or two, precious.”

 

I slide off his lap, unfold into an inky brush stroke disappearing into the back of the club.  Just before I’m out of his line of sight, I pull the dagger from its sheath, and slide it gently, so gently, up my leg.  It whispers across my skin, the fishnets sighing apart and leaving a long line of red inside the frame of black lines.

I’m in the champagne room in seconds, and tip the bouncer to forget I came back here, or anybody came with me.  My Bill will be good for what I just spent, and more.  I have a hunch.

That booth, all the way in the back.  Only one way in and out, and nobody will be close enough to hear a thing from outside.  My Bill is there only seconds behind me, trembling with eagerness, eyes glassy.

I plant him on the bench inside, and pull the heavy curtain closed behind us.  The thumping of the music from the club is muffled now, just enough to give a girl a beat to grind to.  I spread his knees wide apart, then plant his hands on the little tables on each side of the bench.

“Move just one hand, sugar.  Show me what you brought, so I know what you want to do.  Then put that hand right back where it came from, and don’t move it again.  Be a very good gentleman, and I’ll be ever so good to you.  I promise.”  My voice is a husky whisper, designed to skip his ears entirely and run teasing fingernails down the back of his brain.  He reaches hesitantly into one pocket, pulls out his wallet, and sets it on the table the hand came from, before putting the hand back.

“I… I need… Please.  Please.”  My Bill is so cute like this, so pleading and frightened.  I pick up the wallet, skim through it, and smile at him – nice and wide, sharp white teeth gleaming in the half light.

“Such a generous gentleman.  I’ll have to show you exactly the kind of time you came here for, won’t I?”  I push the handle of the dagger down the seam between the cushions, right at his zipper.  Down on my knees in front of him, I slide my spine up like a snake, just touching the edge of my blade with my shirt.  The fabric hisses apart, and my tits pop out.  Nice and perky, nipples hard.  There’s just a little line of blood from my sternum to my cleavage line, and that’s what he’s staring at.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it, gorgeous?  That lovely, red, hot flow.”  He nods, then shakes his head, then swallows with a mouth so dry it clicks.

“Please.  Please.  Just.  Please.  Not you.  Me.”  He’s very afraid now, My Bill, but the tent in his pants says it isn’t just fear.

“Don’t worry, pretty Bill.  There’s no judgment behind the curtain.  Once the curtain drops, every girl goes just Bill’s way if she’s smart.  And you are such a very good Bill, I think I’ll give you what you’ve been dreaming about. ”

I put my knees on either side of his hips, slide myself just a breath apart from the outside edge of the blade, leaving it between us.  A suggestion, a promise, a threat.  Everything important in the world trapped in two sharp edges.

Quick as a wink, my hand is on his throat, cutting off blood and air and sound.

“Everything you’ve ever dreamed about, my sweet precious Bill.”  My smile gets wider, and wider still, as I grind forward onto the blade, sinking it deep into both of us.  It burns, and I can feel him through the steel.

It’s not the best way to start, because it means I have to be a little over hurried in finishing.  They go so fast when I start that way, but it’s so very satisfying to feel that first push right where they’re most afraid of, most drawn to.  It feeds me in a way nothing else does.

And he’s a Bill, after all.  So he gets his three songs’ worth, and I make sure he feels every beat of it.  Afterwards, when he is all wet and used up and not any fun, I take what he brought me out of his wallet.

Even after accounting for having to tip out, and finding another club, My Bill was worth it.  They always are.  Such good little Bills, all lining up to sacrifice themselves to the girl of their dreams.

Everything is different now

Everything is different now, and I must be different too. – Lilith Saintcrow, Fire Watcher

 

It’s so disconcerting.  Disconcerting, in the most literal sense of the word.  You being gone has thrown me out of concert with myself.  My brain doesn’t seem to speak the same language to itself or anyone else, anymore.  The tribe is all in concert, and I can’t hear the drums.

I don’t miss you, not exactly.  I used to, because you were part of what made my day tick.  You were part of the hum and throb that set the tempo of my life.  Now you’re not, anymore, and you left long before I noticed you were slipping out the door.

Everything is different without you here.  It hurt a lot, for a little while.  Now it’s just different.  Teaching myself that I can’t send you things that made me think of you, because there’s no point.  Teaching myself not to miss talking to you.  Teaching myself not to think about you too much, because all that will do is make the empty space more noticeable.

It’s shaped just like you, you see.  No one else will fit.  Not yet.

But there will be a day when things are even more different than they are now.  That empty space will blur and fade, and either I’ll stop noticing it, or someone else will be able to fit it, or I’ll forget that it’s not supposed to be empty.  If I’m lucky, it will get smaller, so I don’t have to look around the empty place to see the world behind it.

Everything is different now, and I must be different, too.

If the world were otherwise, you’re the person I’d ask for help with this.  You’re the person I’d pull my heart into my mouth to ask for.

The world is not that way anymore.

This is the way the world is: you’re not here, and you can’t come back.  I’m not angry at you about it.  I just want to forget.

You, of all people, understand self-preservation.  So I will be different, and remember that I am a survivor, and that there’s nothing to feel very much about.

Remember when you met me, how I seemed so very self-contained?  We both forgot that person.  But I remember now.  I remember how to be myself unto myself, because I have to be, and because I want to be.

You will never ask me if I miss you.  I don’t know who I’m turning into, not exactly, so I don’t know what I would say if you could ask.  I know that you never asking will hurt if I think about it too hard, so it’s one of the things that is different now.

I can be different.

 

(Author’s note: I’m going to try to pull at least a few quotes a week and write something based on each quote, and whatever I am listening to at the time.  Fingers crossed that I can manage to do it more than twice without becoming mystically allergic to the habit.)

Little boys

(Note: this piece was inspired by a quote from an author I admire very much, Richard Kadrey.  Go read him – he does better antiheroes and creative invective and sanity-from-the-back-of-the-mirror than anyone else I’ve read in quite some time.)

 

“What are little boys made of?  Meat and tears and bones and fear, that’s what little boys are made of!” – Richard Kadrey, Butcher Bird

 

MEAT.

“Just what are you made of, son?  Maybe it’s time you found out.”  The coach’s voice is dry, nasal, cutting across the chatter of the other guys.  I can’t decide whether to be angry or ashamed, and end up being both.  He looks me up and down, like I was a steak he thought he could get a discount on.  Fuck him.

We lined up again, all in our lanes.  I’m on fire now, one big lump of resentment.  I work, I do, I’m just not as fast as everybody else.  He doesn’t like me, wants to cut me, because he thinks I’m slacking.  Just because I’m tall doesn’t mean I’m fast.  I mean, c’mon.

He blows his whistle, and we’re off, beating another rut into the dirt.  Gives whole new meaning to leaving somebody in your dust.  I’m eating dust again, as always, losing again, about to hear about it again.  And it occurs to me, in that space between pounding feet, that if I could just make my legs work better, I wouldn’t have to hear shit every single time I come out here.  I mean, they’re just meat, after all.  Meat stretches.

So I stretch them, really make it hurt, and it’s crazy.  First time I’ve ever breathed clean air in this shithole.  It feels good, winning.  Never done that before.  What’s a little pain, compared to not having to hear somebody ragging me all the time?

Well, I found that out, but not till the next day.  By then I couldn’t do a damn thing about it, either.  Just grit my teeth and feel what I’d done to myself, hope nobody else noticed.

 

TEARS.

I’m in the shower again.  It feels like I spend half my life in this little two by two pouring wet night.  Maybe I do.  Don’t know.  Don’t know if I care.

It doesn’t matter how long I stay in here.  I know that.  Just can’t seem to face it.  No matter when I turn it off, how wrinkled I am, the house is still going to be dark.  There’s not going to be any noise I don’t make, no lights I don’t turn on.

I used to say I was just a solitary kind of guy – enjoyed my own company more than other people.  You know that feeling you get, when you think about the shit you’ve said, and realize that you couldn’t have been more wrong if you’d bought a ticket on the wrong train in the wrong town to the wrong goddam continent?  Yeah.  Like that.

Turns out that I only enjoy my own company until I don’t have any other option.  At this point, hell is not other people.

 

BONES.

There’s a real fucked up kind of closeness in feelin somebody else’s bone break.  It’s like, that’s something nobody should ever feel happen, and you’re feelin it with them.  But, if you’re feelin their bone break, you sure as hell don’t want to be havin fuckin quality time with em while it’s goin on.  It puts your head in the wrong place en-fuckin-tirely.

It’s this wet kind of crunch, most of the time.  Like if you’ve ever pulled the leg off a roast chicken, but bigger and sharper.  Gross fuckin noise.  Pay too much attention to it, you won’t ever eat fuckin frosted flakes again, I tell you.

But it’s the closeness that gets me.  Why does doin somethin that shouldn’t feel natural feel closer than fuckin?  Literally and otherwise, I mean.  I don’t know if it’s everybody, or just me.  Maybe there’s just a wire loose in my head.  Probly it’s just me, droppin screws out of my brain left and right.  Cause who the hell would be thinkin about this in the middle of doin it?

 

FEAR.

It’s indigestion.  It’s acid reflux.  It’s that gastro-intestinal thing, where you shouldn’t take too many antacids in case that’s it.  It’s psychosomatic.

It’s on the left side.

Oh god.

Can’t breathe, and it’s shooting, just like they say it does.  So sharp.  I’m too young for this.  I can’t be having this now.  Not now.  So much left to do.

Tell

Seven bears

There was a girl, and she had six bears.  She was a very little, and very odd girl.  Her mother and father never quite knew what to do with her, because she called them “mother” and “father” in the same way she’d address royalty from a foreign country whose titles she didn’t understand very well.  She talked to other children the same way; trying to be friendly, and trying to fit in, but never quite understanding what it was she was supposed to be doing.

Needless to say, she didn’t have many friends.  She had six, to be precise, and they were her bears.  She’d gotten one a year, every year, on her birthday.  She talked to them, and asked them questions about things she didn’t understand, and they talked back (but only to her, when no one else was around) and told her what they thought about what she asked.  So she always had six answers, and she could figure out what she thought was right, and what was silly.

On her seventh birthday, two terrible things happened.  Neither one was supposed to be terrible, but they both were, because they couldn’t have been anything else.  She wanted very badly to blame her mother and father for them, but couldn’t quite manage it.  They hadn’t done either one meaning it to be terrible, only through a great misunderstanding that couldn’t quite be explained.

The first terrible thing started like this: her mother cut the cake, and she ate a piece, neatly.  Her father and mother both sang the birthday song to her (after the cake, but she supposed there was some leeway in how these things should go), and then she opened presents.  There were books, and a calculator, and a wooden pony that rocked back and forth.  Mother and Father could never quite decide what age they thought she was, so presents had a tendency to orbit around her chronological age in a three to five year span.  This suited the girl just fine, because she didn’t put much stock in ages.  They led to people treating her as though she were silly or stupid, which didn’t make any sense.

But every year, she could rely on a bear.  She was looking very forward to this year’s bear – she had Monday Bear, and Bear Tuesday, and Thursbear, and The Friday of Bears, and Significantly Saturday, and Son of Bear.  She was only missing one, and she knew (as the child places in every mind knows, with a certainty that is more sure than gravity itself) that she was missing one.  She only needed one, and now she would have all the bears she ever needed.

So, of course, the first terrible thing was that there was no bear.  She couldn’t even rummage through the wrapping paper to see if she had missed it somewhere.  All the wrapping paper was folded neatly and put in a trash bag as the presents were opened.  There was no bear.

“You’re a bit old for bears, don’t you think, darling?” Mother said, too brightly. “And, well, we know you talk to them when you’re supposed to be in bed.  So it’s for the best that you don’t have any more, you see.  It’s time to move past bears, dear.”

And the girl nodded, and very quietly set about not crying.  This is not at all the same as when she didn’t want to cry.  Now it was work not crying, and trying not to think about crying.  Crying wouldn’t make there be a bear, and even if it did, it would be the wrong bear.  She knew it.

The second terrible thing was an accident, and it wasn’t supposed to happen like it did, or when it did.  It was supposed to happen, just in an entirely different (and, theoretically, much less terrible) way.  Father and mother got into a fight.  They fought pretty often, and it had gotten worse.  They used to be loud fights, with yelling and doors slamming and all sorts of noise.  Now they were quiet fights, and the quiet fights were worse.  The silence could fill up the whole house and make everything quiet, in a dreadful way that was the sound of people waiting for a terrible thing to happen.

There was a quiet fight, after dinner.  The silence poured into all the rooms and pushed out all the air, so everyone felt like they would suffocate, even the bears.  The silence filled up everything, and didn’t leave any space.  Then, when there was no space left for anything, the sound of the front door closing clicked to itself out on the front lawn, where it had space to click in.  The girl heard it, through her window, and saw her father get in his car and leave.

Then the silence was embarrassed by what it had done, and pulled back a very little, as much as it could when it was all stuck in the house and was too big to get out.  It left just enough space for the sound of her mother crying, quietly, in the front room.  It was a very little sound, huddled in the tiny space the embarrassed silence had made for it.

 

Now, let the years roll over the terrible things, and make them fuzzy and less painful.  Let them be memories, with much less power left to them.  Let the silence leak out of the house, and be replaced with voices that are too bright and brittle, trying to talk to each other in the same language that isn’t the same at all, really.

Seven years, all of them full of minutes and seconds and hours and things, with time in them for the girl to grow up, but no less odd.  Years where she learns not to let her mother know she still talks to her bears, and listens to what they tell her.  Years where she still has only the same six friends, but learns to pretend there are more.  Years where every year, the orbit of age that her father and mother think she is gets bigger and bigger.

 

So, now that the years have worn away at the terrible things, there is another birthday.  She knows her father is not invited to this one, after how he was drunk and angry when he showed up to the last one.  She knows her mother is punishing her father, but does not really understand why, or care.  So he has sent presents, by mail.  Each one of them has a card, with a little sentiment in it, trying to show her love at a distance, when she never understood it in person.

There is a bear.  It is the right bear – the one that should have been there years ago, but got lost on its way to her.  It’s had a rough seven years.  It is gray with washing, and missing one eye, and the fur is all worn down until it is smooth and soft like velvet.  But it is here now, and has found its way to her.  It looks like it’s winking at her all the time, and perhaps it is.  The card with it says “I know you love bears, pumpkin.  I hope this one will do; it’s got a lot of history and love in it already.  I hope you’ll love it too.  Love, Dad.”  He’s always called himself dad to her.  “Your dad,” he’d say, or “her dad,” and mean himself.

The bear doesn’t talk during the party, of course.  It doesn’t talk at all until she takes it up to her room, and sets it down by the other bears.  They are all shinier than it is, better cared for and less worn.  They don’t smell, vaguely, of dog.  The other bears don’t say anything about the new bear.  They’re putting off their own sort of quiet.  It’s a waiting, watching, nervous and hand-wringing kind of quiet, as though they’ve afraid they’ve been slacking off and the teacher just walked in and asked to see their work.

“Hello, creature,” said the bear, in a gruff and growly bear voice.  “We’ve been waiting a long time to meet, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” the girl says, quiet and wondering.

“You are called Wednesday by the people who made you, so I will do the same.  It’s a strange sort of name for a creature like you, but it fits.  I am a Wednesday too, as you know – so you may call me Mr. Wednesday, to tell the difference.  Very pleased to make your acquaintance.”  He is smiling, and she can hear it.  It’s a charmer’s smile, a snake’s smile, and one she at once immediately trusts and would not believe for an instant.

“Hello, Mr. Wednesday.  How do you do?”  This seems like a good start, for a new bear who is not new at all.

“I do very well, Wednesday child.  Now, let’s see what we shall do about this fine mess you’re in, hmmm?”  And he seemed to wink at her, still, and she leaned very close to hear his voice, which had gotten very soft and gruff indeed.

Mr. Wednesday bear whispered all sorts of things to her that first night, some of them very silly and some of them seeming very smart.  And the other bears didn’t say a thing, all night long.  A very long night it was, and the sun overslept and left the dawn for what felt like very late indeed.

Mr. Wednesday rode to school in her backpack that day, so she could listen to him whisper.  He did just like he promised, and told her things all day long, even when other people were around, so long as she didn’t say anything back to him.  She learned a very big lot that day, and wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.

Monster Enough.

What is Monster Enough?

That question started out as a rumination on how those of us who dream we are monsters are always afraid of not being Monster Enough.  We are pragmatists.  We know that no matter how good you are at your game, there is someone who is better, or faster, or just luckier today.  We bank not on being the best monster (because there is no best monster, o best beloved, only the monster who wins right now), but on being Monster Enough to win right now and to scare away all the need to win eventually.

When you ask it that way, what is Monster Enough, there is no real answer.  It is a hard question, I think, but not a true question.  It is a question for the place between childhood and realism where you can dream that all your fights will have a winner and a loser, that everything really is that simple.  Certainly, if you pick enough of that kind of fight, it seems like that’s the only thing that’s important.  But that blows away any chance of knowing Monster Enough.

Ask it another way:

Who is Monster Enough?
I am.  You are.  We are.

We are Monster Enough to make the people who love us feel safe in our arms.  We are Monster Enough to make the people who try to chain us tremble when they think of the word “reckoning.”  We are Monster Enough to be soft and good to cuddle, and Monster Enough to roar loudly in pain and fear at the dark.

My Monster Enough is big, and loud, and cuddly if you are nice.  She makes pancakes and knows how to sharpen a knife.  She dries tears on her fur and sings songs while her den falls asleep, and tends the fire and watches the dark outside the cave, just in case.  Monster Enough is not afraid of “going soft,” just because she loves.  Love makes her fiercer, stronger, more desperate.  Monster Enough knows that things which are too hard are brittle, and break easily.  Monster Enough is not afraid of being unready.  She knows that she was ready when children came, all unexpected, and that she was ready when danger came, all unannounced.  She does not have to plan to be ready – she just is.  She is Monster Enough.

My Monster Enough is not afraid to be weak sometimes, because being weak sometimes makes the strength she has stronger, more lasting, more tempered.  She is not afraid to nurture, because nurturing takes more strength than yelling, even if it is not as loud.  She does not need to prove anything, because she is already Monster Enough.

She and I are not the same, and may never be.  But she is someone I would be proud to grow up to be, and I am grateful to have met her.

Who is your Monster Enough?