Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Sonic
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
‘Take this. You’ll hear God,’ she said, and without pause he licked the bitter tab from her salty palm, then took another against her protests. And another.
Now she was saying something to him, but all he could hear was a metallic crashing sound every time she opened her lips, every syllable discordant, alien. It was just like a set of house keys thrown against a counter-top, and as she got agitated and clutched at his shoulders, shaking him, her voice became a hundred keys, a thousand.
Sonic, chronic Sonic, he thought, and tried to tell her that he was still off-tap, that rather than fading away, the audible hallucinations were getting stronger.
But even as his mouth moved, even as he formed the words, she looked at him, puzzled. He tried again, but whatever was coming out of his mouth made as much sense as what was coming into his ears.
We have our new Babel, he thought, and tried to pass on this wisdom with his stupid useless tongue.
Her Labrador was barking at him, yipping with excitement, but all that came out was the rolling laughter of a man. He pushed her aside, and nearly tripping over the leaping dog he got through the door and out into the night.
The squeal of the hinges was a wet licking sound, the door’s slam a phlegmatic cough. As he ran wildly along the sidewalk, feet pounding and sliding beneath him, each footstep was the ringing of a bicycle bell.
He went slower, but the ringing became drawn out, emphasised. If he ran, the rings were brisk, shrill. The lesser of two evils.
The cars went by, the city echoing with the snarling of these great cats. A zippy little hatch shot past with the yowling of a feral tom, while a fish-tailing muscle-car throbbed with a lion’s menace, an angry don’t-you-touch-my-kill warning roar.
Shortly after was an ambulance, the cacophony of its sirens the shrill cries of a terrified baby, and then two babies, and then more. It was time to get away from the roads.
The Sonic was stronger now, getting stronger by the second when the drug should have worn off hours ago. Had he taken too much?
Would he ever hear normal sounds again?
He already knew the answer.
Crying, driven to tears and madness (his own wretched sobbing translating into the sounds of breaking glass), he ran his bicycle-bell steps, stopping up his ears for all the good that did. After hours of this permanent disconnect from the world of rational sound, he went to the infamous Leap. These never-ending alien tongues drove him to the cliff’s edge, alone and trapped. Standing there, toe-tips on the edge of a steep eternity, a strong wind swept up to buffet him from the cold black sea.
He stood there in rapture as the roaring wind became clarity and language, and for the rest of his short life he had a direct and profound conversation with God.
END
On Not Giving Back the Devil’s Hat
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
In Monday’s story, Susannah brought us a cutting from Goodwife Python’s Bestiary of Wonderful Flowers that contained the line, “Do not give [the devil] back his hat.”
I second this exhortation because, from firsthand experience, I know how true it is.
A few years ago, I worked as coat check clerk at a Nephelim bar in the theater district, back when it was still more of a semi-abandoned warehouse district. We had a list of rules, written by the owner in red Sharpie on pizza box cardboard, and not giving the devil his hat was number 5.
It was like a practical joke or a running gag between the boss and the fallen one. We had a whole lead-lined room in the basement full of hats, each on its own Styrofoam head, all under a continual mist of holy water. Each — cowboy hat, bowler, knit black watch cap, velvet beret — had two little holes for the horns, but even without that, you would have known. The heaviness in the pit of your stomach would have told you.
The thing about the hats is that they concealed something even more powerfully troubling: the devil’s haircut. That’s right, like the Beck song — where other cultures have proverbs, we distill wisdom for future generations in pop culture. It was different every time, sculpted hair-by-hair with some infernal product, each ‘do an unforgettable, mind-burning sigil, like crop circles or mandalas whose meaning you never wanted to know. But I digress.
It all went well enough until the day the devil didn’t just roll his eyes at the excuse du jour.
“Yeah. Fine. Never mind about the hat,” he said. “I know better than to wear anything decent here. But,” he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial pitch Eve might have recognized, “there’s a feather in the brim, and I’d like that back.”
There wasn’t anything on the cardboard about feathers, and the boss said to treat him like anyone else (except the hat thing), so I headed downstairs. The foam heads howled; the sprinklers misted what looked and smelled like blood. The only hat with a feather was the fedora I grabbed.
“Thanks,” said the devil. “Last one.” He twitched his shoulders. “Souvenir of the wings that were.”
A tip smoldered on the counter, generous enough — once the gold congealed again — but I quit. When the devil starts noticing you, however positively, it’s time to look for more anonymous work. Please, forget you heard any of this. Just remember the hats.