No Ice (Night In The City and A Letter)

I sat in the mountain town with the ice on the windows until my nose froze up and my snot looked like emerald crystals. It took eighteen years, but that letter came like I knew it would. It took eighteen years for me to get over the mountain for one night in the city, but I got there like I knew I would.

There was ice in the city as well. A little. It was on the conifers planted at eighteen foot intervals along Central, and I used them as a speedometer in my rusted Plymouth. Not as much ice though. When I got into the centre, the ice was nowhere to be seen.

I waited on the street he told me about. I could see his reason for rapture; I could see that just going out for cigarettes held no sway over this street. A hundred tiny shreds of yesterday’s newspaper blustered like confetti as long white buses streaked around the streets, dripping oil and picking up huddled groups of passengers, battened down with fur and galoshes.

I sat outside the graveyard, and looked at the café where my mother used to work when he met her. He used to leave a chessboard on the pink linen tabletop with a game in play. When he came back the next morning, he’d carry on. When he lost, after six weeks of one move a day, he asked who had beaten him. Cappucinos and chess were what he loved her for.

The letter said to catch the last bus. He lived on every bus route. There was no ice on any of them. I found the wooden door in the red brick tenement house, and walked into the grey hallway as dawn began to peer through the eastern windowframe. I sat at the bottom of the stairs and waited for him to come back with cigarettes.

A letter and a city

“If I go any further I’m to shit myself,” I say very loud to my friends and strangers.
Behind a supermarket on a main street anyone could have seen me doing it. I forget to wipe when I start reading what I was going to wipe with.
“You need never fear your eyes are cold, they are full of a million things. You look like you have a hundred stories to…”
I’m scanning and I stumble to the next bar.
“I think about you and I dribble bits of pre-cum,” is my opening line to my gathered friends (and strangers). The enquiries are made and I read on.
“Even your nose has it’s own perfect details, a slight curve, little freckles,”
“Wow.”
“Pathetic."
We’re laughing. The nose thing reminds me of Sal, the ex-girlfriend.
“Your breasts are firm and beautiful, your fingers are slender and strong,”
One of Sal’s things was about my hands.
“Christ, this is fucking shit,” I spit everywhere. Applause arrives after some lines.
I remember a vision of Sal when the line “after you kissed me the first time with your mum in the other room,” and with laughter I skip to the end.
Obviously it’s my fucking name right there.
I didn’t wipe my arse in the end. What happened to this letter?
And someone snatches it off me and everyone laughs again, so fucking hard.
“Fuck you, cunts,” I stand up, “you’re the shit of the earth,” and then I fuck off.

Light and Ash (Classical Monster)

All the houses are full of light and ash; it is there in equal abundance. Dust roils in the corners of the low-beamed dining room, and as I walk through it, I hear heartbeats. I smell vitality, and I fear knowledge. I was born out of wedlock, and my father deceived my mother. I know what it is to deceive innocence.

It is agony. I hear the rushes, I smell the sweat, and I feel the light on their forehead. I was born in darkness, and I was born again in darkness. My father deceived me.

I fall beneath the oaken table and clasp my ears. It is not a matter of hearing; more a matter of knowing, and that is an irreversible process. Outside the moonlight still whispers through conifers; the dark’s pets crawl and scrabble over stone and oak. Men drink in houses; they sit around tables as though I have never happened. In the light, I have not. By darkness, they know I will.

Innocence is easily devoured by the dark. Fear is harder to see when you see nothing at all. They see me, and they know fear. I know innocence; I was born in darkness.

Minotaur (classical monster point of view story)

Scientists are what wizards used to be. Shamans still have all the answers for some people. There are people who worship Gods they’ve invented. Magic is real, but only inside someone’s head.
My point is no one knows what I am, why I would exist. No one really knows why anyone exists I guess.
I mean, more immediately, I don’t want to tear men apart, storm villages and rape cows. But I could do that and no one would think less of me.
They think me low enough.
A lot of people tried to kill me all at once. Soldiers with cracking sticks, machine guns they say. Massive metal cannons that scream and chase.
They want it to be, but it’s not for me that stuff. Fuck it.
I just want some hills, sun and fields with cows.

Crab Meat (Greek Girl)

When I was living on rice and soy milk, I saw something in the mirror. When you live alone, and you see something in the mirror, you’re liable to worry.

My parents were in Hawaii when they heard the story. I couldn’t go; too much schoolwork to catch up on, they said. Elissa, the Greek girl from up on Winchester, came and took care of me. She liked aubergine, crab fishing and Monopoly. My parents asked her not to look at any personal information that might be posted, but to answer any social calls. Elissa taught me a lot of things. How to date a girl, how to drive a car. When my parents got back though, money was no object to her. Neither was free use of my parents’ car. She’d taught herself that. Her friends didn’t see her much afterwards.

I’d never heard the term, but I knew how to tell a good ghost story. I used to tell girls that I liked ghost stories, because I could always scare them. They used to bunch their knees to their chests and shiver.

Bob Krauss reported the story in the Honolulu Advertiser. I always started with this line. She was in the drive-in restroom, combing her hair. When the girl went over to her, she turned. What she saw caused the girl to have a nervous breakdown.

My parents told me the story when they found a copy of The Turn of the Screw in my bookshelf. I stole it from my school but kept finding it lying around my house. It usually happened after we’d eaten crab meat.

She called the station and they all took notice. She’d had a nervous breakdown after all. She supplied more details. Height, clothing. Her hair was red. They had to get her off the air after she repeated that the fourth time.

I’ve never finished that story. I’ve never needed to. They always want to get out of the car before they hear the ending. Noppera-bō. It sounds nothing like crab meat, but that’s all I can ever think of when I think of that word.

In August 1981, I heard that interview. My parents had just come back from the funeral. Most of Winchester Street turned out.

When she turned, she had no face. Noppera-bō. Whenever I smell crab meat, I know why I took that book back.

Greek Babysitter

"You're so full of shit Mike. Greener travel? You didn't even give a shit about the environment a year ago."
She doesn't break eye contact with him even as she pours her fifth glass of wine.
"I'm just saying, I don't think I can vote for a man, no, I don't think a man can viably stand today, without having a policy geared towards the environment."
"Topic of the year, I'll give him that."
"You'll give anyone anything. Do you even have an opinion?"
When she acts like this every time they talk, it's no wonder a man of Brian's character keeps his thoughts largely to himself.
Marcia is finally out of the kitchen, rolling her eyes for everyone's benefit.
"Babysitter?"
Mike takes the bullet and humours her. Someone had to.
"She's complaining that Roy's awake. God forbid she actually has to do any babysitting whilst I pay her to babysit. Feta-munching freeloader."
"Thank God you don't vote, Marcia."
Brian's still smarting. Lucky for him she missed the last two glasses.

trying to work in the detail of "Greek Babysitter". I went hugely overboard.

I open the first door to my house and everything is fine. The second door opens and I meet with the smell of hummus.
Empty tubs crush against the wall being pushed by the door.
All kitchen appliances are on. My toaster has burnt out. The oven door is open child killingly wide.
It is the first level of hell.
Pots and pans with hummus smeared around the sides cover the work surfaces. Outside my three year old is surrounded by perhaps every neighbourhood cat. The child in my arms I open every window and every appliance I turn off. In three rooms there are televisions on. Underfoot on the stairs there is the crushing of olives. My bath is about to overflow.
Half full hummus tubs float on the water. Hummus is smeared on the walls in arches. At least sixty packets are in my house and more olives.
In my bedroom passed out wearing every item of clothing in the house is my babysitter, smeared with hummus.