Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Bonus
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Mario grabbed one last coin, then realized he had timed his leap wrong. He missed the ledge and descended into darkness.
The music faded as he fell, replaced by whooshing wind. Flapping his arms did no good, but he kept it up anyway. Just in case.
A fireball suddenly flew up and past him, lighting rough rock walls briefly before it dropped back down. He then saw the fire pits below, and one small square of solid ground between them. He flapped madly to change his trajectory.
He hit the ground hard, landing on his feet, as he always did. The charred remains of creatures were strewn all around, some half crawled from the fire, others just blackened shells. The pits afforded only one exit: a series of crumbling ledges leading up to a small cave opening. He tensed, jumped across the fire pit and landed precariously on the first ledge. Another leap, then another, and he was at the cave opening.
Inside, lit by flickering torches, a dozen pairs of eyes swiveled his way.
There were four climbers in cold-weather gear sitting on turtle shells and a rather big gorilla slumped in the corner. Mario recognized himself in the other seven, jumpsuits, hats, mustaches and all.
“Mamma mia,” he said. “You’re me!”
“We’ve already been over this a million times,” said Mario. “I got here first, who knows when. Fell down a hole.”
“Me too,” said Mario.
“Fell off a cliff,” said a climber.
“Drove my cart off a big mushroom,” said Mario.
“Then him, then them, then him, yadda yadda,” said Mario. “But it’s been a while since anyone else has made it through the fire pits. Now you make eight. Eight identical Marios. Two pairs of climbers. One stubborn gorilla. That’s thirteen of us stuck here.”
“Stuck?” said Mario. “But we need to get out. We still need to rescue the princess!”
“Forget about it,” Mario said. “Even if we could get out, there are other more pressing concerns. One of us found this.”
Mario looked at the poster tacked to the cave wall. It showed a rather cartoonish looking Mario leaping over a fireball. Mario pointed to a name on the bottom of the poster.
“We have to find someone named Miyamoto. I don’t know what’s going on, or how many of us are stuck in these caves across the worlds, but I think he’s the cause of all this.”
“But how do we find him?” said a climber.
Mario looked around. “You’re climbers. You have axes, right? We Marios can jump. And we’ve got a big-ass gorilla. We can climb back up. Together.”
“Maybe with his help,” Mario said, pointing to the gorilla, who had fingers jammed in both ears, defiant as always. “But you try telling him that.”
Mario walked over to the gorilla, levered one big finger out of his ear, and whispered.
A moment of silence. Then the gorilla stood and flexed his muscles. He roared his approval.
“What did you say to him?” a climber asked.
“I told him he could have the princess. I just want Miyamoto.”
The group assembled, climbed aboard the gorilla.
Mario smiled devilishly. “Let’s go,” he said. “Someone will pay for this.”
It was time to change the rules of the game.
Minka’s Gift
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Minka’s gift was to see how others would die. “Consumption,” she would say to herself while walking through Budapesht’s Jewish Quarter. “Accident. Consumption. War. War. Heart. Consumption.” Her only comfort was that her own reflection remained free of any sign of how she would meet her end.
Came the day she was waiting tables and a man sat down alone. Minka looked at him, and looked again. “Never will he die,” she thought. “He is immortal.” She hugged this knowledge to herself, and served him coffee, goulash and halaszle. After awhile he came every week, and after another while he came every day, and always sat by himself. By and by they talked, and by and by she sat with him so he was no longer alone, and by and by she walked with him by the banks of the Duna.
Their marriage was a small affair. He had no friends, and it saddened Minka to see how hers would die. They both observed the rituals: not seeing each other for a week, the fast for the day of the wedding, her veil. The rabbi thought it a curiously quiet ceremony.
Minka did not tell him of her gift. He might think she wanted only to learn how to live forever. She became pregnant and in time gave birth to a boy and a girl. When they were born she averted her eye at first, but could not avoid gazing on her little loved ones.
“Murder,” she sighed, and “Murder.” Immortality escaped them, then. She hadn’t even known it was what she was looking for until she saw it. She mourned her children even as they suckled.
The marriage lasted a year and a day. On the last day, Minka woke as usual before her husband, and turned to gaze at him before rising. She was shocked to see the age of the man with whom she had been sleeping. His hair had fallen out, his cheeks were sunken, one hand shook as if with palsy. And yet it was still he; he with the neverending life.
He sighed in his sleep, and said a word that chilled her. “Hungry,” he murmured. She knew, with a heartbreaking assurance, that it was not mere food that he must eat. She knew now how murder would visit her children.
Minka eased herself from the bed, backing away toward the kitchen and the very sharp knife. She kept her eyes on him.
“Murder.”