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Momma’s entertaining tonight. The bed frame creaks, the springs shriek, the headboard hammers out a factory rhythm, a relentless machine fury, blam-blam-blamming against the wall. Her flutelike outcries provide a breathy counterpoint.
When I was little, I’d scrunch down outside her door and try to interpret the noises, worried about what was happening. After I discovered sex, I envisioned demons atop her. Monsters. Wild animals. Men with beards and hairy thighs and cloven hooves. Now I close my ears to it. For a murderous instant I see myself appearing naked in her doorway, displaying my fangs.
Lugging the suitcase down the hall is a chore and toting it along the riverbank would be a real pain. Maybe, I think, its weight will determine my destination. I crank open the blinds and the vivid indigo of predawn invades the room. The thrift store furniture looks opulent in the half-light. I perch on the recliner, thinking that if I were Sandrine, I’d have handled my seduction more efficiently and the matter would not be in doubt. Sandrine’s stronger than me, she knows more, she’s more experienced, but how smart can she be? She got herself caught by someone as dumb as a chicken. and she intends to let Elle into her life. Elle’s quick on her feet and rat crafty. A fast learner. She’s capable of using a user like Sandrine.
Who am I kidding?
I’ll fuck up wherever I’m going.
At first light I’ll step outside and hitch a ride to Jacksonville. I can always change my mind. It comes as a revelation, the recognition that Elle is driving this indecisive decision and that it’s Louie who is reluctant to go. I thought it would be the other way around. They’re all scrambled in my head, these roles I understudy, these half-formed characters I inhabit, but I understand now that Elle is frightened of life’s sudden dips and swerves. She endangers herself only when she thinks — sometimes mistakenly — that she’s in control. Louie’s the scary one, the one who Sandrine wants, the one who wants Sandrine. She’s the dreamer, the believer. She’d tattoo a heart on her heart and be true for no reason. She could live on a dime’s worth of hope and make love with a shadow. She’s the kind of girl who’d sacrifice for love.
She’d kill to sustain it.
My Generation
by EMMA BULL
Curfew is at sunrise.
Mornings were get going, get up, get dressed, get to school
Get get get
Wait ’til you get home —
No soft kindly dawn to miss.
Sunset brings forgiveness
Smoothing out the flaws;
Even rusted cars shine after dark.
The date moves forward on the fake ID.
Leather, Lycra, latex, linen
Unmarked in them all
Dance every song
Dance full out
And never shake or ache or gasp for breath.
Bass and kick drum put a heartbeat
Inside every dancer’s ribs.
Best friends dropped the needle down
On that track each time:
Hope I die — he sang.
But they got old.
The track wore down, the tape stretched
While new songs throbbed u
Ruts grow deep and deeper
Until they reach six feet
Then shovel dirt in. Life is change.
New songs, new bands,
New stories, new dreams.
Death is one old song on repeat play.
The living, lazy, choose to die
Before the beat stops in their chests.
Greedy for life after life,
Gulping fresh tunes whole,
Grabbing more,
Glorying in each new night, new dance:
I will never die.
Why Light?
by TANITH LEE
PART ONE
My first memory is the fear of light.
The passage was dank and dark and water dripped, and my mother carried me, although by then I could walk. I was three, or a little younger. My mother was terrified. She was consumed by terror, and she shook, and her skin gave off a faint metallic smell I had never caught from her before. Her hands were cold as ice. I could feel that, even through the thick shawl in which she’d wrapped me. She said, over and over, “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right. It will be okay. You’ll see. Just a minute, only one. It’ll be all right.”
By then of course I too was frightened. I was crying, and I think I wet myself, though I hadn’t done anything like that since babyhood.
Then the passage turned, and there was a tall iron gate — I know it’s iron, now. At the time it only looked like a burned-out coal.
“Oh, God,” said my mother.
But she thrust out one hand and pushed at the gate, and it grudged open with a rusty scraping, just wide enough to let us through.
I would have seen the vast garden outside the house, played there. But this wasn’t the garden. It was a high place, held in only by a low stone wall and a curving break of poplar trees. They looked very black, not green the way the house lamps made trees in the garden. Something was happening to the sky; that was what made the poplars so black. I thought it was moonrise, but I knew the moon was quite new, and only a full moon could dilute the darkness so much. The stars were watery and blue, weak, like dying gas flames.
My mother stood there, just outside the iron gate, holding me, shaking. “It’s all right. just a minute. only one. ”
Suddenly something happened.
It was like a storm — a lightning flash maybe, but in slow motion, that swelled up out of the dark. It was pale, then silver, and then like gold. It was like a high trumpet note, or the opening chords of some great concerto.
I sat bolt upright in my mother’s arms, even as she shook ever more violently. I think her teeth were chattering.
But I could only open my eyes wide. Even my mouth opened, as if to drink the sudden light.
It was the color of a golden flower and it seemed to boil, and enormous clouds poured slowly upward out of it, brass and wine and rose. And a huge noise came from everywhere, rustling and rushing — and weird flutings and squeakings and trills — birdsong — only I didn’t recognize it.
My mother now hoarsely wept. I don’t know how she never dropped me.
Next they came out and drew us in again, and Tyfa scooped me quickly away as my mother collapsed on the ground. So I was frightened again, and screamed.
They closed the gate and shut us back in darkness. The one minute was over. But I had seen a dawn.
PART TWO
Fourteen and a half years later, and I stood on the drive, looking at the big black limousine. Marten was loading my bags into the boot. Musette and Kousu were crying quietly. One or two others lingered about; nobody seemed to grasp what exactly was the correct way to behave. My mother hadn’t yet come out of the house.