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The City's Skirts
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
The skirt was the reddish brown of cinnamon with white circles, as varied in diameter as the city Koti's coins, clustered in the bottom right-hand corner of its front. "It grew this morning in my garden," the old man said.
Bganti needed only a bird's cry of time to translate it.
"Thank you," he told the old man. When the man had gone, with the skirt neatly folded and thinking, no doubt, of how he would possibly sell such a plain garment, Bganti reached for his stack of thick notesheets.
'A brief fall of hail in the south-east of the city' he wrote, and had a boy take it to the Council-Head, who wanted every skirt-message that grew across the city -- even trivialities like the previous night's weather.
Bganti, Master Translator for the city Koti -- only translator of the city's skirt-sent communications -- reclined in his chair and schooled a carefully neutral expression as he flicked through his lie-filled records.
~
A week later the apple crop failed, as the city had known it would. A sudden chemical imbalance in the soil.
~
"This grew in the night. Looks like a complicated one."
"Bring it closer."
The woman with a crescent moon birthmark on her cheek did so, allowing him a thorough look: a discord of colours and patterns, triangles tessellating into stars and squares, smears of black like spilled ink across the spice hues of the rest.
Bganti's whole body stiffened, as if petrified.
"Bad news, Translator?" the woman asked.
"Ah… yes. Trouble at the market today. Perhaps another of those earth tremors."
"Not a bad one, is it?" Her voice went soft, worrying.
"I'll have the Council-Head put a warning out."
~
Sturdy travelling clothes, a few treasured books, a thumbnail painting of his mother -- Bganti packed them as fast as he could behind the concealment of pulled-down blinds. He'd expected more time than this, but natural forces did not follow a man's desired timetable.
The city bells rang the tenth hour of morning. He needed to leave.
But outside, in every street of the city, people hurried towards the southern gates carrying packs and loose possessions, and Bganti saw the woman with a crescent moon birthmark shouting through a megaphone. Pointing at the mountain to the city's north, warning of fire and super-hot smoke.
He had been promised so much money to conceal this.
"Working for the Abani, I take it," said a voice -- the Council-Head's -- as a pair of men seized Bganti, held him still. "Surely you didn't think my failures to train another Translator would continue forever. She's rather good."
As the men dragged Bganti back inside, the woman looked at him just once, with anger as visible on her body as her clothes.
Notes on a Series of Bathroom Tiles Popular c.50 years ago
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
First tile.
A four-pointed star: the city of Ramne, simplified for the sake of ceramic representation.
Second tile.
A willow with six thick branches that keep pale cats on one side and dark cats on another; the latter cats are in a smaller space. The artist's choice of cats to represent the people of Ramne can likely be traced to her childhood at her mother's cattery, where the animals were kept in willow-wood pens, and perhaps also to the enduring popularity of cats with the people of Ramne.
Third tile.
A cat neither dark nor pale curled at the willow's base. Knowledge of Adne's actions makes the meaning of this tile clear: the cat is dead, self-poisoned, and its proximity to the tree means it too will die, just as Madar did from Adne's touch. A deceptively peaceful tile, but these are for popular consumption.
Four tile.
A triad of drooping willows, and in each corner of the tile is the Ramne-star. The stars' positioning signify that the drooping willows occur with Ramne. In truth it took longer for Adne's rebellion to have the small effect it had. The artist's need to hide meaning in trees and cats, almost a century later, indicates this.
Though it is sad to see Adne's sacrifice rendered as bathroom tiles, its presence during a daily cleansing ritual makes up for this somewhat.
Water Bodies
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Marcius watched the slow movements of condensed water on the window, and didn't know what to do.
Behind him, a dead woman lay on a bed. She lay as if asleep -- but too empty of life for that mistake to be made for long. "I see no marks of injury external or internal," Cimber said. "She'll have to be thoroughly scanned at a morgue. Most likely heart failure."
Not an improbable conclusion, given the white of her hair.
Except for the water on her window and the secret words it made. Marcius glanced between them and Cimber, torn. If he revealed the truth, he risked seeing another artist contained. In her condensation-words a trusted water interpreter might find a clue to the artist's identity -- and that would mean containment, imprisonment
of another man or woman who could help Marcius. But every case he
helped solve earned a reduction of his debt to Cimber.
As Cimber requested a pick-up for the body, his eyes moving across the screens embedded inside them, Marcius said, "That's not why she died."
Cimber looked directly at him.
"She bought a water body," Marcius continued, glancing at the window. "Those are her words on the window. She says that she was bored, and now she's leaving in her new body. Soon she'll be floating through the city, playing with the rain, the rooftops, the undersides of weather balloons."
He could not keep longing from his voice. Neither could he ignore the look of displeasure on Cimber's face.
Cimber had not approved of his little brother's decision. And when he realised that Marcius had left without repaying a debt, disapproval had turned to action.
Running down metal roof-tiles, along drainage pipes, gutters -- like slides at a child's amusement park. He remembered it with painful clarity.
Some people worried that too many citizens bought water bodies, and made the act illegal. Marcius worried that too many artists would be contained before he'd repaid his debt.
Later, outside the apartment, Cimber acknowledged the debt reduction. "Another forty-six cases to go," he said. "And I see you haven't changed your mind."
"I'd go back now, if I knew you wouldn't return me to a human body again and again."
Forty-six, he thought as Cimber began silently walking home, until I can be water, until I can play with the rain again.
He hoped that the artists taught their techniques faster than they were caught.
In Oranges
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
To celebrate our first anniversary, each of us here at the Cabal has come up with a story beginning with a line provided to us by the illustrious Jay Lake. Alex Dally MacFarlane starts us off with the tale below, and tomorrow Daniel Braum will take us somewhere else entirely...
“Zoli liked to hang around psychiatrists’ waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks.”
The altered citrus sinensis’ comment barely made Roland pause. Even when it waggled a branch heavy with oranges near her face, she refused to look at it.
“He also liked to kick puppies.”
“Now you’re lying.” She planted a final passiflora edulis seedling in the flower bed, which was covered by a knee-high glass structure to protect the plants inside from the chilly nights. Hopefully these seedlings would not be as troublesome as the last batch. I hope the brothel-boys keep their windows closed at night, she thought, and couldn’t prevent a smirk. Passion fruits are passionate when allowed to express themselves. Why am I surprised?
Brushing soil from her fingers, Roland turned to the orange tree that grew in a nearby bed. Its flower-mouths moved in a way that looked rude, even if she couldn’t quite tell why.
“My brother was an opportunist. You act as if I didn’t know this. But I do know that he didn’t kick puppies. Or kittens, before you suggest that.”
“You act as if you knew him better than I did,” the citrus sinensis retorted, trying to mimic her voice.
Its words stung, a little.
“Then tell me why he went, if you knew him so well.” When the plant offered no reply, she shuffled along the wooden walkway between beds to another batch of seedlings that needed planting out. “You enjoy being smug. You don’t actually know anything, at least not anything important.”
“I’ll know when he dies,” it said curtly.
She wanted to ignore its games, its cruel streak--which had made her brother so fond of the plant, she knew. But this was new. “Oh?”
“He let me bite him,” the citrus sinensis said, smug-toned. “And now I have a part of him inside me. It will tell me when he dies.”
Glancing at it sideways, Roland murmured, “I didn’t know you could do that.”
And she lunged up, running and jumping for one of its branches before it could swing them away. It thrashed at her, shouting rage-filled nonsense. She plucked an orange and dropped to the ground. “An orange every now and then,” she told it, “and if you’re telling the truth, I will also know when the war kills Zolinder.”
“I won’t let you,” all the flower-mouths said, loud and shaking.
Laughing unpleasantly, Roland peeled aside the orange skin. “Even you sleep.”
She tasted bitterness, soil, sweat, pain. Life.
Tasting, also, anger at the tree for withholding this, she said, “You’ll grow more. And you’re a fool if you think I don’t care about my brother enough to hurt you.”
Only For Today
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
I'm red pen-marks on three orange post-it notes, but only for today. Yesterday I was a yoghurt carton, discarded on a roadside and licked clean by foxes. Tomorrow I could be anything--your staple-remover, perhaps, or a cobweb in a farmer's barn.
I gave up trying to control the changes when I was seven. After two years of daily becoming something new, despite my concentration on the mental image of 'little girl, brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin,' I had to realise the truth.
It's been six years now. I've been more things than I remember.
I wish I hadn't sneaked a drink of one of my mum's potions. All those bright liquids, some of them polka-dotted or striped, lined up in jars along the wall of her study--they looked like sweeties. The stripy green and blue one tasted like liquorice and I went and sat outside, feeling light-headed, and thought I would like to be a balloon so I could float above the village and see it laid out like a map.
And I became a balloon, and I saw the village.
The next day, I was a button on a telephone. I haven't seen my village since.
I want to see my mum again. But I never shape-change into a painting in the living room, a cushion on her bed or a note written in lipstick across her bedroom wall.
Sometimes, though, I can pass on messages. Like today. I hope that someone will find one of these messages and take it to her, quickly, before I shape-change into something else, and she'll take one of her potions from the shelf and pour it over me and I'll be a girl again.
She lives at 3 Berrey Close, Windyham, W Sussex, England. Please hurry!
Dinner at 'Gaststätte des Flußmädchen'
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Our food arrived quickly. My wife, still not quite well, had only ordered bread and water. For me, the waiter presented a plate of spaghetti with fish in a creamy sauce.
I twisted a mouthful onto my fork and, on eating it
--saw a woman, pale hair falling waist-long down a tall figure, standing atop a cliff with a fair-haired man. They argued. The river rushed past below them, frothed white by rocks. The woman shouted of secret wives and lies, and threatened exposure.
The man pushed--
tasted something good, I think, but barely remembered it after the strength of the hallucination. Trying to ignore the residual unsettled feeling, I ate a chunk of carp.
--and she fell, screaming. Cold struck her hard, so hard, or was that the rock? Flailing in the water, light and dark playing havoc in her eyes, her mind, and pain spreading from her chest. Water against her.
Water wrote eddies of curiosity across her skin as the pain slipped away. A whisper in her ear. A greeting.
The water is home now and the rock your seat, said the river. Sing for me, maiden, sing sweet songs, sing to fill me--
"Rob, are you all right?"
I realised it was Susan talking. "I... don't know. I think I might have your flu."
Concern coloured her voice. "You should try to eat a bit more. Then we'll go back to the hotel."
Nodding, I ate more of the pasta.
--A song on a stormy evening. A small fishing boat tossed by waves, fighting the white.
The teenaged boy paused in his terror-screams. The song laced his ears, stirred thoughts of home, bed, love.
He felt nothing as the rocks sliced his boat to pieces, as the river tongued him downwards. As the maiden wept.--
"We should go," Susan said, and called for the bill.
Several minutes later we left. I stumbled into the street, as if feverous. The husband's face lodged in my mind. And I thought of the woman, trapped in the river.
"Tomorrow," I said, "we need to visit the Rhine."
Left in her Cupboard
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
12 Feburary, 1914 --
The following items were found in a cupboard in Elsa Greer's house, two days after she was discovered missing:
1 x empty box for an orrery
1 x copy of popular children's novel A Travel Guide to the Solar System with the section on Mercury torn out
Assorted cut-offs and shavings of wood
Assorted scraps of fabric
Assorted lengths of piano wire
1 x note, which reads "Gone to find my sister."
Overheard in a Countryside Inn
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
"The moon," said the man with carrot-orange hair, "is the toenail of a god."
"Eh?"
"Look at it. Thin and curved, pale off-white, grows broader and longer until it must be trimmed back again. It's a nail."
His drinking partner, a fellow local man of middle age, swigged from his pint of dirt-dark bitter and said, "Nah, it's more likely to be a pie."
"Made by the cloud-dwellers, I assume?" asked a peculiarly dressed stranger, who stood so close that they could smell the dust on him. He wore tanned cowhide over his body and, atop his head, a string-fastened cap and goggles.
When he received a murmured "Well, yes" in reply, he sighed and shook his head.
"It is neither of your assertions. It is a mystery. Which I intend to solve, by flying there in my latest invention."
"Ah," the local men said, looking at one another with bemused expressions.
"The cloud-dwellers died out long ago, before either of you were scrabbling around the marketplace. And they did not possess the technology for creating a permanent light fixture so high up."
"Aye," the bartender butted in, "a light fixture, like the candles on my wall. The sky is an upturned bowl, aviator-historian, and you'll smash into it with your flying contraption and create a great mess all over our fields."
"So you say."
The men looked at one another, across beer mugs and the sticky, stained counter. Fights had come of smaller disagreements. But they shared shrugs rather than fists -- the moon was too far away to be of consequence while there was still beer coming from the taps, and each privately felt the truth of his own judgement without any great need for validation through violence.
"A drink for you, sir?" the bartender asked the aviator-historian, and by the time he had made up his mind which bottled beverage he would like, the other two men were discussing the particulars of sheep-raising.
On The Stairs, She Realises
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Follow the pieces of me down -- yes, yes, bare-footed and leaving toe- and heel-marks behind you like a carpet -- follow my steps, let your hand slide down my rail. Don't stop. Don't climb, don't reclaim the things you left behind.
"It is a long way down," she said quietly, lingering on a step engraved with sirens. "Such a long way."
Had Suriyen known it would take this long? Had he told her? She could not remember -- but that was the point. The spreading gaps in her past made truth of the tales sung by the mountain-dwellers about their magical staircase.
She still remembered Suriyen, and that meant she had descended not nearly far enough.
You're a feast of stories, my pale-ankled lady. The scandals of a court are variations on motifs -- but oh, they entertain!
I will devour the reports your lover-spy shouldn't have told you, I will help you keep him safe.
Her legs and feet ached, but she continued down. Here the steps were painted yellow and slick with moisture that ran down the side of the mountain. One bore wedge-shaped markings, indecipherable.
She had been ordered to do this. Though she could not remember why, she knew there had been an order, a secret journey from her bedroom to the top of the mountain, a threat followed quickly by a promise.
"If I am ordered," she said to the stairs, "then I must obey."
They did not respond. Of course they could not; metal had no mouths. "What is it like to be so silenced?"
So full of your life -- I am gorged, pale-ankled lady, crammed with you.
Ahead of her lay grass and tall trees, a stream, and a man standing beside the water. A broad, tall man, scar-faced and smiling, who called out to her.
It took a moment for her memory-stripped mind to process the words. The stairs had left her language, at least. "But so much else is missing."
"Come on!" the man shouted. "You're almost done! Four more steps, darling, and we can be together again!"
"But why is so much gone?" Tears ran down her face. She could not remember the reason -- just that she felt so empty, stripped of things she had cherished, and it hurt.
"You had to do it, it was for your own good, oh Iya, no!"
Her legs hurt with each step that she climbed, leaving the man -- Suriyen, her lover -- behind, re-learning her self.
Will you leave me something? You were delicious before I ate too much.
"I will carve mouths into you, stairs," she panted, almost collapsing onto a step as long and wide as a table.
And I will speak.
Notes - 29/14/106
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Name: Beeotter
Exterior description: A thin creature a metre long, with another metre's length in its forearm-thick tail. The whole body is covered in fur striped yellow and black. Its head is flat on the end of the body, with no discernable neck, and is dominated by a pair of black many-faceted eyes. A double pair of translucent brown-orange wings is its primary means of transportation, although the six stumpy legs suggest some motility when it has landed.
I saw the beeotter from afar, resting on the statue in the centre of the Square. I approached it cautiously. If I had learnt anything since my arrival in this place an unclear time ago, it was to never assume benevolence from its peculiar inhabitants.
Gravel crunched under my shoes; it was impossible to walk quietly in this corner of the world, when the crumbled remains of the buildings that stood around the Square lay thickly across the ground. As I approached the beeotter, a spindle-thin building fell and, seconds later, another sprouted up in its wake, like a stone flower growing at accelerated speeds.
When I reached less a metre's length from the statue, the beeotter leapt from its perch and, wings flapping, buried its sting in my thigh. It moved so quickly I had no time to react. I merely collapsed to the gravel, gasping in shock.
And I heard a voice.
It said: I am a clue.
The beeotter died, stuck into me. I awoke, agonised but with my mind afire.
It occurred to be that this was probably another of the world’s tricks, but I had not entirely given up on hope.
I did what a biologist does when faced with an unknown creature. I laid out my tools from the pack on my back and I dissected.
Interior description: Its innards are laid out in a mess of lines, circles, squares. They intersect, merge, divide--as I watch I see new roads form, old buildings fall. They are confusing. They are a map of this place. There is no exit, no way back into my old world. That door long ago crumbled. But there are places I might like to go.
I pulled the sting from my thigh, cleaned and bandaged the wound. Several days passed where I could walk only far enough to gather stone-fruits from the buildings surrounding the Square. In that time I worked hard to preserve the beeotter--plucking a hollow glass-fruit from the plants around the buildings, filling it with a mix of water and concentrates from my pack.
And then I began walking, holding my map out before me and choosing my path.
The Storyteller is Swallowed
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Rajab stood still while the monster approached, despite the way its dun and ochre hide blocked the view of pastures and trees behind it, despite the size of its maw as it spread dark brown lips wide. That's larger than any of the arches in the palace, he thought. It must have come from far into the mountains. And he thought, also, about the pain in his legs from running so quickly from the palace and from the city. He couldn't go any further. The soldiers chasing him had stopped too, but did not stand still. Fearful gibbering filled the air in-between the monster's thudding steps; two of the men fled. Their captain didn't call them back. "It is right that you should die in such a filthy manner!" he called out to Rajab, his voice shaking. "And then the city guards will come to destroy the beast, and you will be twice-killed. Just as you twice broke into the harem, twice distracted the women with your presence. I am sure the Sultan will agree that this is more fitting than any death a lowly captain could have devised, and he will clap his hands in delight!" A moment later the monster was upon Rajab, its great lips around him, its tongue drawing him inside.
In the mouth of the monster, Rajab told the story of the first spice farmer to the broad, dark uvula. It quivered in delight and only let him pass to the oesophagus when he had told it another tale. On the way down that long passage to the stomach, he spoke of dark-eyed wizards who together raised the first city from the sand--a long, convoluted tale with monologues on the making of laws and the design of plumbing, and nested anecdotes about the people who came to live in the pale houses. And in the stomach, where he came to rest, he told many tales. He entertained the walls and the acid with stories about djinn, animated carpets, sand-beasts such as the creature in whose stomach he rested, palaces that teleported and palaces that were no larger than a peppercorn, and countless more.
The city guards never did destroy the beast. Instead they joined Rajab in the stomach, along with women and children and livestock. Though some passed through to the intestines, many remained with Rajab, and their numbers were replenished regularly. Rajab, who had won the favour of the stomach and was not digested, was content. He possessed what he had been seeking all along: greater audiences for his tales.
The New Language of Masks
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
In the city of sticks and glass, a girl sits bridgewise and trails images through the air with bone-thin fingers. Under her stony seat, gondoliers steer the city's hidden ways, singing hexes for safe passage. Past her step the city's people and the world's people come to visit, unseeing of her fingers' work. Their bodies brush the air-patterns, send them folding eyewards, and in bursts like the flashed sun-reflection of a coin dropped to the ground she sees their masks.
Alphabets of colour and shape, a language of dreams and futures, paint their faces.
"Beware spiders," the girl whispers, sibylline, to a woman whose silvery hair clings silken to her neck.
A hitch in the woman's step, the only indication that she heard more than wind, kicks other air-patterns into spirals.
"I see…"
Something new. The girl blinks. "Music on your face, sir." New language, of quavers and halves, written barwise across polished white cheeks-paper. She reads, and does not like it. "Bad music, sir." Fingers draw handkerchiefs in the air, and the two men with music on their faces pause and stare at her until the church clock's chime draws them onwards.
~
She sees it everywhere, now she has noticed; it baritones into masks and the skin beneath, trebles in the air between shoulder and shoulder.
At twelve chimes the architect comes to her, bearing a plate of food and a question: "What do you see?"
"Music."
But not in her images. Laughing suddenly, she twitches her fingers in curves and in their wake forms a cat, mirror-image of the one hopping after a butterfly across the bridge. Then she sees a semi-quaver sneaking up the tabbied tail and looks away. "Too much music."
The architect is smiling.
Fingers shaking, she tugs her hip-long hair in front of her face. Black curtain. She doesn't want to look at him. Music stains his face, his clothes, his hands.
"It's in my food. You've put music in my food."
"Tell me what it tastes like."
Fingers tangle a quilt of No into her hair. She tips the plate, watches spaghetti twist and fall and plop into the canal. "Bad music, sir."
He laughs and walks away.
~
There is music in the water, too. The gondoliers' songs are different.
The girl sits bridgewise, trailing images from her fingers, and waits.
New Year's Wishes
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Wishes fluttered around us with the snow. I held out my hands, cup-curved, and tried to catch one. Throughout the square, men, women and children did the same--hoping they would catch their own, which was the best luck of all, or that theirs would fall into the hands of someone who would understand, someone who would say Yes and grant it.
I had little to wish for this year. My son grew strong, my husband’s back had recovered and when the ground thawed he would return to our spice fields. War had not come to our province in five years. Perhaps I should have wished for my sister to fall pregnant again with a baby that would not die only days out of the womb; but no, that was her wish to make.
War would come and go regardless of wishes. We all knew that.
Looking down at my snow-flecked and spice-stained hands--red and orange and yellow between the grooves in my palms, and the colours would not fade no matter how hard I scrubbed--I saw a wish. Black letters in the curves and dots of our script covered the paper-scrap.
A final kiss, before I depart for Aratavi.
My hand shook, a little.
I imagined the person who might have stood in line earlier in the day, waiting to write his or her wish so that it could be scattered by our town’s priest. Knowing that soon the journey to Aratavi must be begun--a journey to search for the remains of a loved one. People went to Aratavi during peace-time for no other reason. And in the marshes and pools, rife with the stream-women and algae-men who had killed so many of us, many found only their own grave.
Yes, I thought.
I rubbed paprika on my lips.
One by one, I kissed every person in the square. I left red marks in my wake. That way, I knew who I had yet to step up to, smiling kindly before I pressed my lips against their cheek, their brow.
An hour after the priest scattered our wishes, the bell tolled again, signifying that the previous year had transitioned into the current. I had kissed every man, woman and child.
I would never know whose wish landed in my hands. There was the man who touched my hair, briefly, before I moved on; the woman who whispered Thank you when I kissed the fist-shaped bruise on her chin; the man who wept silently through the hour. Perhaps it was one of them, but perhaps not. It doesn’t matter. I granted the wish.
And my own wish, also: Happiness, in whatever dose possible.
Bear
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
In the amusement park, the rollercoaster roared like a bear. Each twist, each pretzel-like loop, each sudden plummet -- on all of these, the wheels went over the track and out came that wild-creature sound. That roar.
~
I stood beside the empty seats and my dress was the same bright red as the straps’ buckles.
My torch flickered once, almost went out. Stupid brother, I thought. He’d said they were new batteries when he gave them to me, clenched in his fist like the coins I gave him to make sure he wouldn’t tell our parents.
The metal shapes of the rollercoaster jutted out of the dark, their lines straight, narrow. They looked like bars.
~
So distinctive, that roar, that children and adults from miles away came to listen to it. Some sat in the seats of the rollercoaster, feeling the roar through their backs and chests and legs. Others stood below and felt it in their ears. They said that it sounded like fresh snow and pine needles, a mate and her cubs, pink fish, blackberries and discarded cans.
They said these things, but they did not think.
~
After that roar lapped against my ears and my skin, tongue-rough, I couldn’t stop thinking about the bear. Couldn’t they hear how much it wanted to go home? On every corkscrew it cried for its mate, on the final plummet it pined for scales and a wriggling tail beneath its paw.
~
“We are lucky,” people said, “that Old Man Rickernell built us such a profitable thing.”
~
In my great-grandfather’s house, buckles covered the walls like sculpted patterns. Some were silver, some gold, some wooden. Some were plain, others carved with complex designs that I couldn’t follow.
I remember touching a half-made one in his workshop, and it felt like an insect bite.
“There’s power in a good buckle,” he once said.
And so I cut them all off, one by one, from the straps on the rollercoaster. They clanged on the floor, chain onto metal, until I reached the last one and the bear burst out of the metal and plastic, breaking its cage into a thousand pieces. Part of a chair hit my arm and I fell, dropping the torch, and tried not to cry into the black night. The bear ignored me.
I heard his roar, triumphant into the night as he ran through the turnstiles and down the steps, and it sounded like the stars and the moon, and trees on the horizon.
The Switches You Have To Search For
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Pieces of furniture hide their switches inside.
If you can find its switch, hidden in whorls and rings and knots, your table will shake off its ornaments, tear off its clothes--its paint or wax or finish--and dance naked for you, limber like a contortionist.
You did not think its pose was its natural state, did you?
Watch your cabinet dance, its drawers pounding the earth like athletes' feet, swirling its frame like a discus. Watch your wardrobe break-dance on its doors. Watch your bed serenade your floor, watch them recount sordid tales to one another, watch them make love--a shifting labyrinth of planks and slats.
You could get lost watching them.
And if you do not hunt again for their switches, if you do not dash in with your shield and turn them back off, you could stand motionless, staring, until they take hold of you and swing you into their dance. They will weep resin and glue while they do it, but they will not stop; their compulsion runs deeper than pity, so deep they cannot know its motive. Your bones will clack against one other like drawers sliding shut.