For Two Years
by AlexM
It is said that when Captain Widal recovered from his mysterious disease, he would not talk to anyone about what had happened. But he was a kinder man. … He never married, though he was seen once or twice with a beautiful young woman whose name was never known. … Neither did he ever wear short sleeves in public.
– Widal: A History
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I put spices on your tongue for two years, night after night. I folded my fingers into yours and I pulled the sheets over us.
And you did not blink.
You did not notice — even when I pulled up your shirt, just a little, to the elbows.
Captain, Captain, I am writing on your body.
You did not notice, night after night.
We met in a café in the narrowest street, but you do not remember me. You sat at the table and ordered hot water with a lemon squeezed into it, and I poured it for you with hands that you took into yours, saying, “My mother’s looked better when we exhumed her. Girl, do you eat?”
“Sometimes,” I replied.
“Take this,” you said, “and eat more often.”
I brought flowers to your window, day after day. I sat with my harp in my lap and I played for you.
When you collapsed in front of a small group of townsfolk, none carried you away. None remained in the street to check your pulse, but me.
You fell asleep, my mother later said.
An enchantment, my father said, and good riddance.
I brushed your hair. I polished your buttons. I gave my parents all the money I made with your coin and I bought what I needed to care for you.
I took your coin to the races and I brought back handfuls of gold.
And you did not blink for two years.
The Fruit of the Baskervilles
by David
A tangerine is lurking in the stairwell. Steven snatches the mail out of the box mounted on the wall and dashes up to his room. He fumbles trying to unlock the door. The tangerine is hopping up the stairs: thump, thump, thump! It’s coming closer and closer; sweat’s beading on his brow. Finally, the key goes in. He lunges into the room and slams the door. His heart pounds. He leans his ear against the door. The hall is silent, but he knows the truth. The fruit is out there.
The sun sets. A murmur of avocados in the street below. With nightfall it becomes a killing grove. No one goes out after dark anymore. The table: bare. Steven has tried to work, but between the noise from the street and the silence from the hall, he can’t concentrate. Nothing on TV but a special about Carmen Miranda and some horror flick called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. He goes to bed, lying rigid on the sheets, staring at the ceiling.
The sun also rises. Steven hasn’t slept, but it’s morning and he has to go to work. He needs a diversion, checks out the kitchen counter. Nothing there but a banana cowering in the bottom of a basket. What about the fridge? A slice of pizza so old all the life’s gone out of it, some horseradish bottled in Elizabethan times, and, in the crisper, something purple and feisty, quivering for a fight. “You’ll do.”
Steven rips the door open. His messenger bag’s over his shoulder and the grape stem is pinched between thumb and forefinger.
“Where are you, you little monsters?” he calls. There is no response. He pads silently to the stairs, starts down. When he rounds the corner he sees them at the bottom, rolling back and forth like cars revving up for a race. He raises his hand to show what he is holding, descends a few more steps. The tangerines freeze, then some of them start to edge back uncertainly. A few turn and roll under the credenza.
Steven laughs brittlely. “Who let the grapes out!?”
He releases the bunch.
The end
