InkStains January

InkStains

January

by John Urbancik

InkStains

January

by John Urbancik

© 2014 John Urbancik

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to
persons, living or dead, are neither intended nor should be
inferred.

Cover art and Design © 2014 John Urbancik

For more information, please visit
www.darkfluidity.com

For everyone who has ever

touched a pen to paper.

Acknowledgements

It would’ve been impossible to write all
these stories by hand without the help of Cross fountain pens and
all the notepads I used – including Moleskine, Lechtturm1917, and
Rhodia – none of whom provided me with any promotional
considerations.

As I took this journey, and twisted my hand
into unrecognizable distortions, Mery-et suffered the most even as
she gave me her full support. Thank you.

And thanks, as always, to Sabine and the Rose
Fairy.

INKSTAINS

INTRODUCTION

When I started this project, I aimed to write
a story every day for a year. By hand. I found an inexpensive yet
fancy fountain pen (fountain pens are, by definition, fancy),
started with a Moleskine notepad, and on 1 January 2013 set to
writing.

I allowed myself three days off per month;
after a few months in which I only took one day, I decided to make
it one day – a mandatory day, at that – through the rest of the
year.

Stories did not have to be fiction.
Nonfiction, essays, reviews, memoirs – all genres – everything was
open to me, so long as they were complete.

These are the results: failures and successes
both. I made zero editorial decisions on what to include. I cleaned
up grammar and spelling, and spent months typing up the almost
250,000 handwritten words; I did my best to strengthen the writing
where it was weak. I’m very happy with a lot of the stories, and
disappointed with others, but I think some are fantastic. (I’m
biased. You decide.)

As these InkStains collections come out one
month at a time, I invite you to follow me on this journey. See
where I went. You’ll start to recognize recurring themes. You’ll
start to wonder why I’m so fascinated with a nursery rhyme. You’ll
start to map out your own journey. You’ll know, almost to the day,
when I went to New Orleans; but will you know when I went to New
York, or where else I might have gone?

As you read this year’s writing, I’m doing it
again. I’ve embarked on another InkStains project. The twist, for
2015, is that I will decide on a monthly theme to unify the stories
– whatever they may be.

JANUARY

Welcome to the first month of the year. You
are welcome to read a story every day – every day but the one I
took off – to follow my progress naturally. You are just as welcome
to devour them in an entire night.

In January we’ll see fast cars and old gods,
magic and myth, the first of my maps – a theme I’ll return to
throughout the year – a few dangerous women, and the birth of
poetry. I hope you enjoy following my journey.

1 January

The moon overhead: she smiles on me, she
guides me, she offers me the greatest of gifts, even if I cannot
recognize them at the time.

The moon, high above, sends her blessings,
sends her archers, sends her poisonous children to aid me in the
great things I must – in this lifetime – accomplish.

The moon, behind her veil or fully exposed,
doesn’t merely watch. She manipulates. She plans. She changes.
She’s responsible for the most intricate machinations.

The moon, hanging low, tonight, eyes – angry,
disappointed, dissatisfied – focused on me. She’s taken her
blessings, she’s sent her archers and poisons, she means to
eradicate me.

I won’t let her.

I have learned a great many things and
fostered a great many talents. As fine as her archers may be, I am
swift, agile, light as the wind, and fluid like no thing these men
have ever seen.

Arrows in the air, a rain of them – a storm,
but I retreat to city streets and narrow alleys. I force them to
chase me into close quarters. They are archers, designed for long
range assault, and have little protection from my knives.

I don’t make them suffer. I am quick and
merciful, merely fighting for my life, my own life, and perhaps the
fate of the world. I don’t know if I’m bold enough to make such an
assertion.

Ultimately, the moon’s archers fail, and the
moon’s archers fall.

I have devoted myself to the study of a great
many poisons. The powders do not tempt me. The smokes dissipate.
The odorless, colorless, invisible and undetectable poisons she
sends – the moon up in her sky – swim uselessly in my veins. They
fight amongst themselves, acting and counteracting; and yes, they
make me ill, they bring a sickly color to my cheeks, and they steal
my strength, but they fail to bring me down. My lungs still draw
breath. My heart beats. In an uncomfortable, unsightly moment, I am
purged.

Almost, I admit, the venom
of a lover threatens me, but even against impossible beauty I
emerge triumphant. I would like to say I changed my lover’s heart,
that
Love
conquered, but this night; alas, that would be a
lie.

Finally, atop a hill, within sight of both
the city and my former lover’s fresh grave, the moon comes down
from the sky wrapped in elegant darkness, shadows cascading from
her hair, eyes like diamonds, lips and hips dangerously curved.

We circle each other on the hilltop. I can
defeat her archers and her poisons, her plans and designs. I can
overcome the loss of her favor. I do not know if I am capable of
defying the moon directly.

“
Why will you not die?” she
asks.

“
I will. But not
tonight.”

“
Why must you resist me?”
she asks.

“
I never have.”

“
You mock me.”

“
Never would I
dare.”

She smiles. It’s the sharpest weapon in her
arsenal. She says to me, “I may have fallen in love.”

I don’t presume, so I say nothing.

“
You have proven yourself
worthy,” she tells me. She steps forward. I step back. Her smile
trembles.

I say, “You turned away from me.”

“
Tis my nature,” she
says.

“
You set your archers on
me, and your poisons.”

She shrugs. “I have more archers, and more
poisons.”

“
You wanted me
dead.”

“
Death,” she says, “is not
an end.”

“
I will not die this
night,” I tell her. “I will not fall for your lies, your
machinations, your fabrications. I will not fall for you. You’d be
gone within a fortnight.”

She looks away. A moonlit tear slips from her
eye. Sorrowfully, she admits, “Tis my nature.” Then she looks to me
again and extends a hand, one last, final invitation. “But I
promise a glorious fortnight.”

2 January

The crow said to me, “It’s time.”

I glanced at my $23,000 watch (don’t judge
me; I’m in the midst of a fever dream) and asked, “Time for
what?”

“
To float down the
river.”

“
Styx? No.” I said it
flatly. “That’s not going to happen.”

“
A different river,” the
crow said. Then with a mighty caw, it flew away, leaving me on this
raft without an oar, leaving me to the mercy of the merciless
river. I floated, swiftly and with apparent determination (no, I
shouldn’t really call it floating) until the raft got caught up in
the bend of the river.

I’m no raftsman. I’ve never been on a river.
I don’t know how they work, except in the grip of a fever
dream.

Upon the shore, the land, the dry stuff that
surrounded the river, I met a coyote – a desert creature, I’m sure,
but you can’t blame me. The coyote said to me, “It’s time.”

“
It’s not.”

“
You’re already late,” the
coyote said.

“
Then I’ll need a faster
car.”

The coyote grinned the way you’d expect a
wolf to grin, then he led me to a sleek, low, red piece of art from
Italy on the edge of a long, narrow road.

“
Straight on till sunset,”
the coyote told me.

Let me tell you now, that car was fast. I
didn’t have to hit the gas to make it go; I had to hold it back
with all my weight on the brake just so it wouldn’t take off before
I was ready.

The road led to a castle. The sweet Italian
stallions got me to it in no time.

At the door, a butler greeted me. He called
me Lord something, and it might’ve been my name. He said to me,
“The party has already begun.”

“
They couldn’t
wait?”

“
No, my Lord, the could
not.”

So I entered the ballroom, where I thought
I’d heard all the music, but it was empty. I found a kitchen large
enough to cook for the entire Velvet army, but it was hollow and
full of the echoes of my footfalls. I found a bathroom with an
Olympic sized tub, a jetted tub, the water streaming – but I found
no party.

I did find a mouse. The mouse said to me,
“It’s time.”

“
We’ve been over this
already, “I told the mouse. “It’s not time till I say it’s
time.”

The mouse said again, “It’s time.”

I gave the mouse a good view of my back.

Somewhere, there was a clock. I imagined it
was huge and elegant and gothic, because that’s the way it sounded
as it struck, struck, struck. I followed the sound until the last
of it faded, but never found the source. Yes, I counted the chimes.
Twelve. Midnight. Don’t assume it means anything, not in the
confines of a fever dream.

“
There’s no party,” I said
to no one.

A long hall led me a long way, but I made no
progress; and though I made no turn, I found myself lost, if not
forgotten.

That’s when I remembered. I’d drunk from the
river, not the Styx, not death, but the other: Lethe, the river of
forgetting. I’d given up my memories of me and you and everything.
Don’t ask me why. I can’t remember. Not while in the maelstrom of a
fever dream.

I said, “I need it back,” though there was no
one there to hear.

I responded myself. “You must have done it
for a reason.”

“
No reason is worth
sacrificing yourself.”

“
You’re still
you.”

I had a point, I suppose, but I had another
as well: without knowledge of who I was, without my own experiences
to guide me, without my past mistakes from which I might learn, was
I really me at all? Was I anyone? Or was I merely trapped in the
eddies of a fever dream?

I left the house. At the door, the butler
said to me, “Leaving so soon, Lord?”

“
I must,” I told him. “I’m
late.”

The car, as it turned out, moved just as
quickly in the opposite direction.

The coyote, still grinning as a wolf might,
agreed to watch the car when I left it, though I doubted I’d ever
see it again.

I dove into the river. I couldn’t make the
raft float against the current, but I had arms and legs and a
certainty — without a memory to back it up – that I could swim. I
struggled for breath. I reached a familiar shore, the first of my
short memories, and as I climbed onto the land the crow
returned.

“
It’s time,” the crow said
to me.

“
Don’t rush me,” I
said.

The water of the river dripped off me.
Speckled bands of sunlight through the trees dried me slowly.
Eventually, I began to remember – not in a flash of sudden
knowledge, but easily and gradually and peacefully, until I even
recalled what had driven me into the river in the first place.

Bathed in that memory, tortured in a fever
dream, I wept. Every tear returned the fragment of another memory,
either good or bad, pieces of my own cloth, my soul, the truth of
myself as if escaping a fever dream.

Somewhere, somehow, as my tears slowed, I
found an epiphany, something about a whole being made up of
fragments of dreams, fever dreams, feverishly me, no longer a blank
slate if ever I was.

Sometime after, I woke, not yet recovered but
wondrously healed.

3 January

The rain waits on the horizon, promising and
threatening and posturing, darkening the clouds, but held in place
by the will of one man.

Marvin is a magician.

He’s not particularly good, he’s not
talented, and he’s incredibly lacking in wit and wisdom. He is an
aging man with gray hair and a Salvation Army suit, a widower and a
veteran, and maybe something of a poet in some deep, rarely tapped
crevasse in his heart, but he has learned three tricks of magic. He
can pull objects out of a hat, though his isn’t a magician’s top
hat but the kind of Fedora Bogart used to wear. He can always pull
the Jack of Spades out of a deck of cards at will. And he can delay
the weather.