Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Of the Third Sex, in a Park
Friday, February 8th, 2008
You are a bearer, of the third sex, contributing no genetic material to the children you’ve carried. You live in a town that is mostly humans, hardly any of your People. Your last marriage ended when your husband was killed in a road accident, and your wife withdrew into herself and became a Silent, speaking to no one, looking at no one. All you have left of your husband is a poem he made for you out of braided fiber one long winter night. It isn’t a very good poem, but it’s wildly sexual, and you have always loved it.
Your four children are all gendered and don’t like to spend time with you, because they think you can’t possibly understand their lives. Three of them have adopted human ways, and the other is studying to be a god-caller, climbing to the tower in the ugly, human-built temple on the edge of town every morning to bellow to the heavens and bring luck, rain, money, healing, peace, victory, love.
Your skin isn’t as green as it used to be; it’s taken on a grayish tinge. Your fingers used to be very nimble, and you learned a little bit how to play the human instrument called the piano, although you needed to play with little pieces of felt stuck to the keys so they wouldn’t hurt your fingers.
You are in love with a human, and you don’t know what gender it is.
The human you are in love with sits on a bench in the park in a bulky coat with a herringbone pattern, cooing to the pigeons. Sometimes the human brings bread and tears off tiny pieces to throw to the birds, but usually not. It is a very old human, with a face as wrinkled as a male’s retracted crest, and skin thin, almost translucent. Its face is transformed every morning with a beatific smile when you come down the path in the park, but it never speaks.
Today when the human smiles, you smile back, although your face was not made for that human expression. Without speaking, you sit on the bench with the human. Today it has brought bread, and it tears it in half and hands the larger half to you. For a time, you both feed the pigeons, who are greedy and ungrateful.
“What’s that around your neck?” the human says, pointing to the poem. You bend forward to let the human look. You can tell from her voice now: she is a woman. And now that she is an old woman, she’s a bearer, too.
Barbicide
Friday, January 25th, 2008
It was a big glass thing on Richie’s barber table what give me the idear. It was full a blue stuff like blueberry Kool-Aid an combs an stuff. I say, “Richie, what’s that bar-bi-cide” an Richie says “That’s a kinda special soap for my combs so they don’t get the lice.”
I says “Somebody comes in for a eight dollar haircut they shoulden get some other fella’s lice,” an Richie says “Nope, the lice cost extra!”
I like Richie. He cuts my hair ever second Thursday a the month. One time it was Easter an he dint but mostly he always does.
“You know,” says Richie “There’s regicide, that’s killin a king, an there’s genocide, that’s killin a bunch a people with the same religion–”
An I says “There’s homocide that’s killin a homo” cause I knowed that.
An Richie says, he says, “So I figure barbicide must be killin a barber!” an then laughs. Richie’s real ugly, his face is like you crumpled it an left something greasy on it but his hair is cut real good. His wife cuts it. He cuts everybody’s hair but his wife cuts his hair. Anyways he laughs real good.
He dint know I know about murder. One time this guy told me about murder an I remembered it hard as I could. He says you need the motive, that’s why you kill him, an method, that’s the way you do it, an opportunity, that’s when you get your chances.
Richie hands me the scissors an he turns an gets the razor like he always does an I had those means an that opportunity cause he always does that every second Thursday when he cuts my hair. I just needed a motive so I thunk an thunk but I couldn’t think a one.
I tried to think a one fore that next second Thursday but I couldn’t so when I was gettin my next haircut I says to Richie I says real joking about the opportunity an those means an I says I just need a motive an Richie says that’s easy an I said I couldn’t think a one an he says that’s easy an I said what.
He turns to give me the scissors like he always does but then he give em the wrong way, he sticks em right in me an Richie says, he says
“Revenge.”