Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Of Dances and Doors
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
He doesn’t remember being born and knows the woman on the other side of the door is not his mother; yet still she created him. He loves her and hates her for that.
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He senses the hollow place in her gut. The place longing to be filled. The place that wants to let him in.
Every action born of this hunger feeds him. Misguided fuel and black energy streaming, streaming, streaming from her heart- shadowing her silver cord. It winds into the ether, flows through the door into the void where he sits. Waiting for grace to be forgotten. Waiting to be let in.
He feels her most when she is contemplating the hollow and thinks she might fill her heart with love.
And he wants her to. He knows every act from her higher self will cause him to wither.
But she will not rise in this way. Not tonight. She will invite him in. Invite him to dance. She opens the door…
He fills the hollow in her gut. The dance begins. He leads. She lets him. Bells are rung. Promises are undone. Voices are raised. Words fly- stinging little barbs with heart ripping accuracy. She feels full. But only for the most fleeting of instants.
Then the hollow returns. There is not enough room in there, even for him. The woman staggers- her words hanging in the air with a palpable weight.
Even though no one can see him, he hides. A place behind the open bedroom door that doesn’t swing fully. The space between it and the wall.
Something has happened. Other doors are opening. The air feels heavy as if with rain.
“Brother?” A voice calls out.
He always knew he’d had brothers and sisters, though he’d never seen them.
He can’t see the source of the voice. He imagines an androgynous white form. Moving closer to him.
“Yes?” he answers.
The form and heavy air rushes to him. It feels like a cloudburst. Front on front. Then the nether void blows in and reclaims him.
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He doesn’t remember being born and knows the woman on the other side of the door is not his mother yet still, she created him. He loves her and hates her for that.
-END-
* This is a companion story to The Dancer, the Door, and the Ordinary Stain. Which can be found in the archives under my name, from March 27, 2009. http://www.dailycabal.com/daniel_braum *
At the Elephant Corners
Monday, April 13th, 2009
It took Sylvie all morning, steering her motorbike through crowded market streets and up stairway alleys, before she found the corner and the four bas-relief elephants, right where the fortune teller said they’d be, sculpted into the stone of each building at the intersection. The second-floor balconies perched like howdahs on the backs of the elephants, and the doors were half-hidden in the legs that were the buildings’ front corners.
Sylvie tugged the bell-pull by the knee of the blue elephant’s door-leg, heard a faint chime and the sound of feet down stairs. The door opened; a woman bent from the second step. She wore a long dress, black and covered with tiny glinting beads, her hair wrapped in a white towel, as if just washed. She curled her hand in a gesture that seemed to mean Sylvie should follow, and led the way up.
The fortune woman had said Sylvie would die, soon and horribly, if she didn’t stay in the elephant long enough to hear three things.
They came up into bright sunlight on the howdah-porch. Beyond it, the room went back into shadows. Sylvie saw couches and cushions on which more women in dark dresses sat or lounged. Incense so heavy she nearly sneezed. From below, the sputter-pop of her motorbike, someone stealing it, or trying to, and almost ran back down the stairs.
A life-size silver gorilla sculpture, on top of which someone had left a dusty bowler hat.
“For any who visit,” said the woman. “You can go no farther bare-headed.”
Sylvie put it on. The thief had the bike motor rumbling close to the right note. Sylive’s palms sweated; ever since the last accident, she knew every time she started the bike, every time made a delivery, it might lead to a final accident. That’s why she’d found the fortune teller.
The whine of her bike increasingly distant as Syvie walked into the room, stepping around cushions. This must have been the fortune teller’s plan. Send her here so her bike would be stolen, and she couldn’t die in a crash.
“Not many find us,” said the woman. That was two.
Sylvie had escaped death, but, without a bike, she doubted there was anything the fortune woman could to do to avoid Debtors’ Island.
“What is this place?” said Sylvie.
“It is the fortune tellers’ school.” The woman spread her arms. Smiled. Women on the nearer couches looked up. “And you are our newest student.”